Pokes? The dictionary suggests jabs or thrusts, such as in the eye, sharp stick optional, but, other than figuratively, I’m not sure that is quite what is going on here. Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter, contrarians both, are possibly here more poking our conscience, or maybe just the general perversity of life. Sure, we get a list of possible rationales, citing London charivaris, a chaunter’s delight, recording demons collecting mistakes in a sack (eh?), but much of this goes whoosh, over my head, possibly deliberately, these professors in the school of life having an academia that delights in obscurity.
Reading on, I learn that the title comes from the tale of Tittivilus, the same said recording demon (still eh?), who collected mistakes, or pokes. A quick wiki tells me this is so, so much so that he is also known as the patron demon of scribes, responsible for the errors that can creep into transcription. So he’s the typo devil; I know him well.
You never quite know what to expect with Stick In The Wheel, their earlier outings a cavalcade of tricks and turns, subverting ideas about the folk tradition on the one hand, whilst simultaneously championing the purest deliveries it can offer. True to form, as in expect the unexpected, this album opens with an ominous industrial drone, ‘Crystal Tears’, before Kearey’s heavily treated voice rises up through the debris, like a fire in a disused foundry. It is a wonderful din, that draws you in and sets the scene, if not necessarily of what next to expect. It ends on some exquisite crystalline notes on a guitar, that hover just on the edge of discord.
The fuzz guitar, over a tinkling incongruous acoustic jangle, of ‘Back Of The Hatch’, both riffs repeating throughout the minute and a half, sees Kearey set the decks with spoken word, an explanation of sorts: “only you can fix your best bits”, sounding more warning than statement. The title track then sounds positively orthodox by compare, with a rolling rockabilly electric guitar and pounding drums, Kearey still on speech mode, before the madrigal grotesque of the chorus offers a hint of ‘Paint It Black’. Appropriately.
‘Burnt Walk’ is then a plangent lament, as a pair of double tracked Kearey’s pick up a traditional sounding melody. Oddly, the whiff of rockabilly is still present, the slapped bass adding to that suggestion. Kearey can sing, and sing well, the confirmation clear and true. An almost jazzy vibe inhabits ‘Lavender’, with torch song guitar to accompany the old street seller’s song, before the further changes rung of ‘The Cramp’, one of those roustabouts that marry sound and rhythm. Astonishingly, or not, this is a 16th century ballad by a William Elderton.
Avoiding predictability as only they can, ‘Cracks’, another ancient sounding tale, features a complex acoustic guitar part that could come straight from the Led Zeppelin school of borrowed ideas. A song about the city, London, the clip clop percussion, trotting in midway, is perfect. Kearey sings, appropriately, like the urchin lovechild of Plant and Denny. Here is the time to note who plays what, the scaffolding that underpins and accentuates Kearey’s vocal. And the answer is, basically, Carter, who plays near all else: guitars, bass, accordion, synths and programming. Where there is percussion more demanding than Kearey’s handclaps and similar, drumming is provided largely by Sian Monaghan, with Carter unaverse to adding some too. Busy fella.
After all this broadsheet balladeering, ‘Can’t Stop’ captures that musical moment when Carnaby Street psychedelia met ragtime and trad head on. (And that’s trad, dad, not arr.) What sounds like clarinet, at least when first appearing, is guitar, that clearer as it reprises, and distorts. Next up, ‘What Can the Matter Be’, astonishingly, is, an oom pah pah eastern European iteration of the playground favourite. But rather than any three old ladies, there is something a good deal more here to worry about, the lyric offset by Kearey’s matter of fact delivery. It is quite remarkable.
Realising a need for respite to let that soak in, ‘Watercress-o’ is a simple rendition of this close relative of ‘Cockles And Mussels’, just voice and guitar. It clears both palate and conscience and belies any of those lingering jibes about Kearey’s heavily estuary delivery, often the main thrust of early reviews. Similarly stripped back, ‘Brisk Lad’, is a dark tale of latter-day upcycling, of poaching another man’s ewe. Richard Dawson covered this Mike Waterson song recently, but his unaccompanied delivery isn’t a patch on the chill within this shivery take: “there’s a number of jobs to be done, my brave boys, a number of jobs to be done……” A flourish of handclaps, and it’s done, in less than two minutes.
Rather than the playground, it is now the nursery that gets plundered, for ‘Hush’. Hush as in a-bye baby, with a rousing gypsy swing arrangement. Unsurprisingly, it has you question the innocuousness of the rhyme, the horror diluted by the ubiquity. Until now. And, maybe you are thinking, after this run of near conventional acousticity, where’s the edge, riding through the opening numbers, got to? Well, think away, they’ve kept that warm till last, a seven minute epic of discontent and dysfunction. ‘Steals The Thief’ returns to the foundry of ‘Crystal Tears’, if during down time. Back on is the vocoder and, allied to an ominous drumbeat, the sense is funereal, a horse-drawn hearse wheeling slowly through the streets, perhaps with the outcome of some ghastly industrial accident. This is all my conjecture, mind, but think verse 7 of ‘Poor Murdered Woman’, from ‘No Roses’, where the church bell tolls, and you’d have exactly the mood, if brought into a grim post-modern focus. It is stupendous.
I took on this piece purely to try and get my head around the hype that surrounds this band. Those early reviews, concentrating on diction and delivery had swerved me from full attention. Disregard the naysayers, of which there may still be one or two, appreciating I am late to the party. This record is an essential document and the duo are to be commended for their unblanching and unflinching approach to the folk songs of old England. Plus, the reference to the Albion Country Band is more than just a simple short cut to the mood of one particular track, a sudden realisation hitting me, that in Nicola Kearey we have a voice truly fit to follow in the tracks of Shirley Collins, the similarities far outweighing any difference.
Seuras Og
Artist’s website: www.stickinthewheel.com
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