Tag: Dark And Twisties

Having self-released Part A of their two EPS, COULDN’T BE HAPPIERS – Jodi Hildebran and Jordan Crosby Lee – now combine that with Part B as Couple(t)s. A review of the previous songs can be found on this website and again this comprises two love, protest and folk story songs, the second half opening with fingerpicked ‘King Of Austin’ which, playing like an Americana version of a talking blues, is reflective best buddies bromance and the families you choose (“we’ve both grown soft, and we’ve lost some hair/If I ever need help to hide a body, I know who would be there”), one of whom has gone on to become a big noise in the city. That’s paired with the skittering, lyrically whimsical ‘Wherever You Go’ (“You could be on a Parisian cat walk/Or in your pajamas in a coffee shop parking lot/Or lying with your head upon my chest/Or standing in aisle three, obsessing on your grocery list…I’ll love you wherever you go”). Turning to protest, sung by Jodi and featuring lap steel, ‘Weatherman’ is about the glass ceiling (“I been working twice as hard/For nearly twice as long/But I’ve gotten half as far/Told I don’t belong”) and was inspired by June Bacon-Bercey, the first woman meteorologist to appear on TV in the 70s, as well as being a woman of colour, but only because the regular presenter was arrested for robbery.

Alternating verses, ‘I Got You’ is a jaunty. harmonica blowing chugalong about being there as support that variously talks of cross dressing, unintended pregnancy and inter-racial romance with the chill out message “just put down the guns/Join fun love everyone/I promise friend that there’s still room for you”. The story twinset is provided by the circling fingerpicked ‘Brown Mountain Lights’ which draws on a mysterious lights phenomenon in Burke County for a story about a gold miner and his love searching for one another through the mountains, the other being Jordan’s slow walking ‘Lydia’s Bridge’, a familiar ghost story of picking up a girl who’s car’s crashed and later finding out she’d died on prom night 100 years ago. A twain you should definitely meet.
www.couldntbehappiers.com

JENNIFER BELL is a singer-songwriter from Nottingham who has partnered fiddler WILSON WALKER for a decade. They are joined on their EP, Old Bones And Silver Fishes, by Daniel Kittmer who provides the percussion backing on bodhran and adds harmony vocals. Wilson reminds us that we reviewed their previous album as a duo back in 2018 – has it really been that long?

Jennifer’s compositions have the feel of real traditional songs. The opener, ‘Ho! Sailors’, uses the tune ‘King Of The Fairies’ to describe the perils that await unwary sailors and the performance of the tune alone would be enough to earn the entrance fee. ‘Old Bones’ is a jokey mash-up of elements of ‘Barring Of The Door’ and ‘Two Sisters’ although the self-hammering xylophone is a novel twist.

‘Home And Dry’ gets serious. It can be read as a love song to a drowned lover, perhaps one of the sailors in the opening track. Jennifer’s guitar comes to the fore here. ‘Silver Fishes’ could be a sequel to ‘Home And Dry’ but it is, in fact, a clever warning about the possible extreme results of global warning – “How many tractors can plough the water” she asks. Finally, ‘The Little Nut Tree’ is a gentle telling of what should be a slightly macabre fairy tale. If there isn’t a genuine traditional song based on this story there really should be. This is a most entertaining record and we unreservedly recommend it.
http://jenniferbellsongwriter.com/

Rooted in the rhythms of the sea and his upbringing on the rugged west coast of Scotland he calls home as well as his experiences crossing the world’s oceans in small sailing boats, COLIN MANSON’s digitally self-released Wayfinding debut EP captures the spirit of adventure with water being the connecting keynote. Simple acoustic numbers, each song tells its own story. On ‘Sea Son’, as a new generation takes to the waves, literally and metaphorically, he sings “Come my only son/Now the water is calling you/The tide is leaving with the dawn/And all I ask is do the best you can” while, opening with a drone, the fingerpicked ‘Water’ speaks to the call of the sea (“The waves on the water/Sang to me/And told me stories/Of how it all began/Out on the sea/My heart/Is longing to be”). The percussive rhythms of ‘These Words’ anchor a darker lyric about reconciliation (“All these words you learned/You took and twisted them/All around your head/You spread them around the place/And for the things we’ve done/There is no return/But now the time has come/For us to give it all/Back again”), the final number being ‘Where We Started’ which has a similar theme about going with the flow and not battling against the tide (“Don’t be so hard on yourself/It might turn out alright/If you try just a little less/And stop fighting like this”) as he encourages “Step out blindly into the night/It’s ok to be afraid/There’s a place waiting for you there/If you shine your own light”.
www.colin-manson.com

Janie Price aka Anglo-Irish songstress BIRD is joined by illustrious collaborators Ally McErlaine, Andy Dunlop, Hal Lindes and Nashville luminary Ilya Toshinsky for her Heads Or Tales (Pop Fiction) EP. A four track collection of folk-Americana with intricate strings arrangements by Sally Herbert from Florence + The Machine, it’s headed up by ‘Sunny Days’, a 60s gypsy folk-like ballad lament about what could have been (“The sun reminds me of a circle/That broke in two and so did you/When all the bad words found a way/To have their say”). Elsewhere she turns in a credible version of The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now’ transforming it into the swirly. strings-swathed folk song it always wanted to be while, with an opening glissando of strings and a lai lai lai refrain, the fingerpicked ‘Daddy’, a raw song about generational legacy (“Daddy was an angry boy/Ever since he begun/Oh it’s difficult to know how to feel/If you never felt love …He left his family/A wife and a son/And his child grew up/Addicted to drugs/Daddy had an angry boy /couldn’t be undone”). The EP stand out though is ‘Roy’ which, referring to the tragedies that dogged his life and coloured his songs, relates the unsubstantiated story of how Roy Orbison prevented Elvis’ corpse being stolen, allegedly paying someone to prevent the theft of Presley’s body The line “On the night that you saved Elvis/I wonder what you said/Did you sing only the lonely/Over his final bed” referring to how he offered him the song but Presley turned it down, leading it to becoming Orbison’s first major hit.
www.birdofficial.com

‘Old London’ is the kind of song that you would have on repeat forever. Launched for Loneliness Awareness Week, VIRGINIA KETTLE’S ROLLING FOLK tell of a chance meeting between an unnamed girl and boy one night in the city. It partly draws on Virginia’s experience as a busker living the lifestyle the song describes. The band is John Kettle (of course), Chris Lee, Claire Smith and Mark Woolley and the track is available digitally from …
https://therollingfolk.bandcamp.com/

The first of four singles between now and September, which will form her November EP Home Enough For Me (Delfina Records) variously themed around home, homelessness, kindness, risk taking, and lost love, San Francisco-born and now Nashville-based after 10 years in Italy LUCIA COMNES releases the title track. She on fiddle, Dan Knobler and John Palmer on guitars and Eamon McLoughlin on mandolin, it’s a steady Americana folksy chug ode to a travelling musician’s life on the road as she sings “It doesn’t matter where, if there’s a guitar I can play/Along the road as far as I can see/Sing a lonesome song before I rest my head, then I’m free /Oh that’s home enough for me.”
www.luciacomnes.com

They sound sort of American but DARK AND TWISTIES are actually from Swansea and if you listen carefully you can hear the hint of the accent. Their new single is ‘Grace And Dignity’, a beautifully rich study of a woman of “a certain age” living on her own in the contemporary world. The title carries through to the style: not mawkish but imbued with a sense of pragmatism. A band to watch.
https://www.facebook.com/DarkandTwistiesMusic/

KC JONES, actually a Warwickshire duo of Karen (mandola, guitars) and Colin (guitars, bass) Jones, joined by Mick Bisiker on drums, borrow from metal themes for the self-released troubadour-styled, Eastern European tinged six-minute ‘The Apocalyptic Horsemen’, augmenting the biblical quartet with a fifth, humanity, and as such shifting the usual doom and gloom to a message that catastrophe can be avoidable.
www.kcjmusic.co.uk

AMADOU & MARIAM had just completed work on their forthcoming album L’amour à la Folie when Amadou passed. The title track is now available as a single – a powerful track blending their Malian traditions with western instrumentation – heavy drums and electric guitar dominating. It’s a powerful song that seems to pay tribute to their resilience in the face of disability.
https://www.amadou-mariam.com/

WITHOUT WILLOW are Donegal duo Karen Kelly and Simon McCafferty, their new self-released single ‘The Way Back’ which, featuring gentle guitar notes and inspired by those unknowing last days of childhood friendships but also how time brings reconnections as, if the bonds were strong enough to survive the years, you just pick up where you left off, as Kelly softly sings “Hello stranger, I’m glad you called/How long has it been, I can’t recall/I’m just happy we could put aside/A little time to set the world to rights”
www.withoutwillow.bandcamp.com

As Bob and Virginia Kettle have already received a mention we really should go to the source. MERRY HELL have released a new single, ‘Only Love’ from their most recent album, Rising Of The Bold. Written by Bob and Lee Goulding, it repeats the band’s core message that we all need one another all the time while pointing up the fakery of social media. Powerful vocals from Andrew with fiddle and bass leading the accompaniment, it’s another winner.
http://www.merryhell.co.uk/

Together, Martin Adil-Smith and vocalist Jo-Jo Azare, from the Isle of Lewis and Inverness, respectively, are Dark Folk duo SKORUM, the name meaning “I Invoke” in Old Norse. Their influences spanning the classic folk of Clannad and Enya and the heavy metal of Machine Head, their new single is ‘Innsmouth’ which, opening with classical notes before a steady drum thump sets in, draws (as does the forthcoming album Dagon Rise album) on the writing of HP Lovecraft (whose The Shadow Over Innsmouth provides the title), weaving a hypnotic, almost pagan chant as it tells of remote hamlets that sexist on the edges of our society where the Old Ways still persist. On a more traditional notes, it’s accompanied by their ethereal take on ‘Greensleeves’ and a fingerpicked Joan Baez-inflected version of ‘Barbara Allen’.
www.skorum.bandcamp.com

If you need to know whose side DROPKICK MURPHYS are on just listen to their new single, ‘Who’ll Stand With Us’. It’s typically high energy, uncompromising folk rock and uses the symbolism of black roses to comment on current events in the USA. If you still don’t get it take a look at their video. The track is taken from their upcoming album, For The People.
https://dropkickmurphys.com/

The third single from their Red Barn Sessions EP, SON OF THE VELVET RAT and THE GHOST & THE MACHINE dig into the work of transgender songwriter Ezra Furman for the hypnotically moody, slow walking, growly and sonic swirling ‘Day Of The Dog’ which, like a parched Johnny Cash, talks about an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth (“If we get in a fight, I won’t take out my gun/And you can go home tonight, and you can think that you’ve won/But I’ll see you again, and I’ll prove you dead wrong”) and the day of reckoning (“nobody can judge me, nobody but God”).
www.sonofthevelvetrat.com/redbarnsessions

‘I Can Feel Your Presence’ is the new single by DAMIEN DEMPSEY taken from his forthcoming album, Hold Your Joy. Beginning with Damien’s gentle voice over a richly clanging guitar the song builds into a real production number. The song itself is a heart-wrenching reaction to the death of someone close.
https://www.facebook.com/damiendempseyofficial/

To celebrate her 45th birthday and to pay tribute to the 45 rpm format, under her musical alias as WAVE OF THE FLOOD, Scottish singer-songwriter Lindsay Strachan is releasing a single each month for a full year, gathering them together in an album next May. First up is the gently aching ‘All Ends Will Come’ which, produced by Kris Drever who also plays guitar and featuring John McDonald on double bass and Cameron Henderson on fiddle, is a meditation on mortality and the fragility of love.
www.waveoftheflood.com

As she prepares to release her debut album, A Call From Somewhere Else sometime around now, DREA LAKE gives us a new single ‘4U’. Loaded with brass, hand percussion and a touch of Joni Mitchell’s soprano the song seems to evoke Canadian country life in a non-specific way. Nice one.
https://drealake.com/

In 2018, AMIT DATTANI, acclaimed for his fingerpicking guitar work, was diagnosed with a degenerative nerve condition and the prognosis that at best he had two more years of playing guitar before his hands would no longer cooperate. He refused to be defined by his condition. Seven years and much perseverance later, armed with a custom-built guitar and an adaptation in his playing style, he returns in splendid vocal form with ‘Wrong Kind Of One’, the sprightly and intricately fingerpicked (showcased on a lengthy play-out) title track of his forthcoming album, which, with a melody that I suspect deliberately recalls ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’, addresses refugees who have had to make terrible sacrifices and journeys to escape violence, hardship, war and destruction (“Where’s my home now, dust and rubble”), only to find themselves dehumanised, left aside and mistreated (“they say I’m, I’m unwelcome, and they turn out all the lights…I will stay here, in the shadows/I’m the wrong kind of one”) in the lands where they sought refuge.
www.amitdattanimusic.com

‘All Smiles Tonight’ was written in 1879, first recorded in 1926 and many times subsequently but it’s never sounded like this. POOR CREATURE comprises Ruth Clinton, Cormac MacDiarmada and John Dermody and if you’re into contemporary Irish music those names will be familiar. There is heavy percussion and Ruth’s voice is drenched in echo complementing the treatment of the instruments. The song is the title track from their forthcoming album.
https://riverlea.bandcamp.com/album/all-smiles-tonight

Founded by brothers Robin and Joe Bennett, one of this country’s most criminally underrated bands – and creators of ‘Dusty In Memphis’, one of the 100 best songs of all time – Oxford’s DREAMING SPIRES make their long awaited return after ten years with the slowly swelling ‘Normal Town’ (Clubhouse). Taken from their upcoming album of the same name, with shades of pre-disco Bee Gees it’s  a bittersweet synth overlaid quiveringly sung piano ballad inspired by a 2017 study which saw Didcot, their local town, dubbed ‘the most normal town in England’, As such, exploring themes of home, nostalgia, alienation and change, it comes with lines like “it’s a Saturday night and there’s blood on the floor and a broken glass but somehow nobody saw what happened here when the officer asked”  and “if you try to remember you  get stuck in the past/yeah there used to be fields, we’d walk next to the tracks/Yeah I know it feels to slip through the cracks” and living there is “like you’re telling a joke and nobody laughs when the punchline arrives”.
www.thedreamingspires.bandcamp.com

KIM CARNIE – she of Mànran – blends her Gaelic vocals with the kora of Seckou Keita on her new single, ‘Òran na Bèiste Maoile’, providing a tantalising glimpse into her forthcoming album. Written with Keita’s kora in mind, the song is inspired by Celtic myth and the strange sea people who appear so frequently.
www.kimcarnie.com