Titled for the iconic and notoriously complex Birmingham landmark, the hometown sextet are in fine fettle for Spaghetti Junction, their third full-length self-released album with their trademark mix of mesmerisingly chaotic but highly disciplined instrumentals that see a wide spectrum of world music styles colliding.
Sporting the Eastern European colours you’d expect from the title, Pete Churchill and clarinettist Katie Stevens knocked out ‘Balkan Replacement Service’ over a lunch hour between workshops, the track featuring Pete’s new acquisition of a cherry-wood Italian accordion (apparently bought with money earned from his solar panels). The shortest track at just over three minutes, it opens with a brief drone before rattling along like a bus driven by a dervish, taking bends on two wheels and, taking a break from Ilias Lintzos’ clattering drums, briefly calling into the depot for a woodwind whirlygig solo.
For ‘Im Tocht Lang Tae See Dee’, violinist Sarah Farmer (her last album with the band and now replaced by Emily Dawe|) gathers together three traditional tunes from Shetland’s fiddle tradition, ‘Dus Bun Lang Awa Am Im Tocht Lang Tae See Dee’, an untitled reel learned from Kevin Anderson of Fiddler’s Bid and the traditional-styled ‘Willie Be Wast Da Loch’ composed by Gideon Stove.
After that little mouthful, the longest track is the tempo and style swerving six-minute plus ‘Northern Lights’ which, to quote the notes is a Norwegian/Swedish sandwich with an afrobeat, South African highlife and Ethiopian inspired 6/8 groove filling peppered by a Sub-Saharan clave..
World music buffs will of course know that ‘Der Heyser Bulgar’ is a 19th-century dance tune made famous by clarinettist Naftule Brandwein, here repped by Katie, though back then nobody ever thought to flesh it out with a doom-rock middle section and a closing accordion-led wonky waltz.
Michelle Holloway’s recorder dancing along and the bass pulsing, ‘Green Fingered Hector’ has its origins in guitarist Emma Reading’s first gig with the band were she realised to her horror that she had no idea how to play the next track on the set list and comes with a virtually Wagnerian wordless vocal, the percussion freaking out on either side. The tune’s designed to represent her panic.
Originally commissioned by composer Sid Peacock for his Surge Orchestra, ‘Krims Krams Rŭčenica’ lets Katie loose for her take on a traditional Bulgarian waltz, Krim Krams a colloquial German term meaning “knick-knacks” ” and Rŭčenica that aforementioned waltz, this version opening on melancholic notes and climaxing with a drum n bass finale.
North East Brazil is the port of call for ‘Mara’ anchored by Maracatu rhythms, Katie providing the drum clattering opening ‘Jig For Mini’ in response to some guitar loop pedal noodling by Emma and the second, ‘Bog an Lochan’, one of the earliest strathspeys in the Highland manuscripts, giving percussion its head before closing with ‘The Ivy League Set’ taken from the repertoire of 19th century piper Phillip Goodman with Katie on whistle.
Like the opener, the title track was the result of a Katie and Pete dare, resulting in a lurching frolic lifted from an unperformed tune he’d written for a Sardinian band they’d one both been in and comes with a mock-opera choir singing the title before it seems to be wheezing to a halt only to burst back to life with a brief flurry of da da das.
It ends with another local nod with the bonus track, the only actual song, the slow swaying, phone lights aloft, ‘Birmingham Rain’, an American folk-tinged hometown heartbreak anthem (“Driver stops by me, I get in by his side/What can I tell him don’t want to explain/Tell him my tears are just Birmingham Rain”) written by local singer-songwriter Barbara Norden, wistfully sung by Michelle backed by the Choir with No Name Birmingham, the city’s choir for people affected by homelessness of which she’s a volunteer, Pete the musical director and Katie playing in its band.
A glorious noise, twisting and turning like the interchange after which it’s named, it’s their most accomplished and arguably most accessible release to date. Set your GPS and navigate.
Mike Davies
Artists’ website: www.thebonfireradicals.com
‘Balkan Replacement Service’ – officially live:
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