SINDERINS – Sinderins (Westwynd Recordings WYNDCD001)

SinderinsThe name taken from a confluence of roads in the band’s home town of Dundee, Sinderins comprise singers David Webster, Stevie Anderson and Gavin McGinty with Billy Fisher and Tom Barbour providing the rhythm section, their instrumentation including mandolin, harmonium, double bass, auto harp and percussion. While rooted within folk, they’re a decidedly variegated outfit, embracing blues, rock and traditional music, the opening number, ‘All Join Hands’, a march rhythm song that seems to be about Scottish unity, having an almost medieval flavour, Webster’s heavily accented powerful vocals backed by fingerclick percussion and what sounds like bouzouki. By contrast, the softer acoustic shuffle ‘For Every Road, A Traveller’ has a Paul Simon-ish feel, while the digital-age themed ‘Button Pressing’ with its skittering drum rim percussion and semi-spoken vocals has a vibe that embraces jazz, blues and cabaret.

While the fingerpicked acoustic reflective lost love ballad ‘A Bird That Flew’ with its whistling and harmonies shows they have a softer side, for the most part this is muscular stuff, even the wistful ‘Valentine’ balances its quieter moments with a soaring swell. They’re probably at their most forceful on the full-blooded, clattering drums driven ‘‘Till The Walls Come Down’, Webster again in epic voice, the vocal scales-surfing heady Zeppelin-esque folk rock of ‘Fayre’, the vocal apparently recorded after Webster asked the others to drench him with iced water in order to hold the high note. Then, after a deceptively spare acoustic blues guitar-backed intro, there’s slowly erupting ‘Neon Cherry Blossom’ (a song that contrasts the urban pollution of Japan with the purity of the countryside) and ‘Absolutely Nothing’, a swaying clockwork rhythm of jazz-shaded folk-pop about the apathetic, time wasters and vacillators “worth your weight in benefits”, that has an almost Bond theme air about it.

Bursting with confidence, ambition and inspiration, they could be the biggest new band on the folk scene this year.

Mike Davies

‘All Join Hands’ – live and acoustic:


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