Benjy Ferree – Come Back to the Five and Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee

Benjy Ferree

Benjy Ferree’s second album is an ambitious attempt to tell the ultimate Hollywood story, the grimly totemic life and death of child star Bobby Driscoll, the original Peter Pan. Driscoll, known as Bobby Dee, played Peter Pan in the Disney film when he was 16. It proved to be the high point of a hitherto unstoppable child star career, and the rest has a relentless inevitability: the roles drying up, drugs, guns, assault charges, Warhol’s Factory, rehab, more drugs, and finally a lonely, down-and-out death at 31 in a derelict East Village tenement.

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Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age

Broadcast and the Focus Group...

Broadcast have been at the centre of Birmingham’s quirky, quietly innovative music scene for a good few years, so it comes as shock to discover they’ve upped sticks and relocated to Hungerford, this mini-album marking their arrival among the Berkshire poppies.

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Alasdair Roberts – The Wyrd Meme

Alasdair Roberts - The Wyrd Meme

Over the past three years, Alasdair Roberts has tracing an quiet path from traditional folk musician, covering the standards with a guitar and a soft Scottish voice, to visionary writer and teller of esoterick tales. ‘The Wyrd Meme’ is a four song EP that follows hard on the heels of ‘Spoils’, a complex and aborbing album.  It’s an urgent bulletin from a parallel world, where nameless things lurk in your dreams and myth is more likely to save you than rational thought.

The music is shamanic, sweet and terrifying, mostly just Roberts and his guitar.  The record starts with ‘The Hallucinator and the King of the Silver Ship of Time’ is a complex, multi-phased seven minutes about a mystical hermit with a mission to ‘with an eider quill retrace our annals’, rescued from the sea by the King of Time.  It features a series of manic first person prophecies, gnomic and unsettling: ‘The dagger of the west will never linger long in the scabbard of the east.’  All this is conjured from minimal instrumentation, strange whistling sound effects and Roberts’ intimate voice.  It has the potential to be unlistenable, but instead it’s astonishing.   He fuses psychedelic sensibilities, with alternative Lovecraft realities and the true storytelling folk tradition. … Continue Reading

The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Duckworth Lewis Method

The Duckworth Lewis Method

Cricket has an entire writing genre of its own and a long-standing place in literature, from Dickens to Pinter, but music about cricket can be counted on the fat fingers of one batting-gloved hand. There’s one genuine masterpiece, ‘When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease’ by Roy Harper, a song fit to be played at any man’s funeral. And then there are various co-opted TV and radio signature tunes and ‘Dreadlock Holiday’ by 10cc.

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James Yorkston and the Big Eyed Family Players – Martinmas Time / I Went To Visit The Roses

James Yorkston and the Big Eyed Family Players – Martinmas Time / I Went To Visit The Roses

Whereas the ’60s folk revival was based on the reinvention of traditional songs, the 21st century version has been fuelled by new songwriting.  James Yorkston has built a loyal fanbase with a string of albums packed with new songs that deserve to rank with the best music of the era.  And he’s great live.

So Folk Songs, his new album of traditional covers, is a tantalising prospect.  He’s parked his faithful backing band, the Athletes, for this record and taken up with old collaborators the Big Eye Family Players, who lay on a fuller, sweeter sound with mellotron, clarinet and fiddle.

‘Martinmas Time’ is a ballad about a girl who tricks her way out of a promise to a troop of soldiers by dressing as a man.  It’s a quiet, melancholy song, which, in true folk style is a lot nastier than it first appears, the sub-text dealing with avoiding rape.  The best known recording is a haunting version by Annie Briggs, who sings it unaccompanied, in her timeless voice. Yorkston’s version sounds as though it was written yesterday, and features a bassline he claims is borrowed from Can. … Continue Reading

Anathallo – Canopy Glow

Anathallo

The title of Anathallo’s second album drops a heavy hint about what might lie within. Should we expect brittle folk harmonies? We should. Will there be floaty, incomprehensible lyrics? But of course. And might there be talk of campfires, stars and fireflies? Indeed so. But although Canopy Glow does meet these rather low expectations, it also transcends them for a few satisfying moments over the course of the album.

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Wilco – Wilco (The Album)

Wilco (The Album)

When you think Wilco, you probably think solid, professional alt-country song-writing, lots of respect from the music press, and reviews in The Wire.  You probably don’t think: Theme Tune!

So, the first track on Wilco (The Album) is a very pleasant surprise – ‘Wilco the Song’.  It’s a band theme, in a long and very silly tradition from the Monkees to S-Express.  And it’s right up there with the best.  It starts off sounding like the Velvet Underground, as befits serious indie craftsmen, and then heads more in the direction of the Boo Radleys doing their summer pop thing.  It’s all about how great the band are, how they can make it all better, and much you need them:  “Are times feeling tough? /Are the roads you take rough?”/A sonic shoulder to cry on”.  And when they conclude “Wilco, I love you baby!” you think, “yes! I believe I do!”  It’s funny and very catchy. … Continue Reading

Wooden Shjips – Dos

Wooden Shjips

San Francisco’s Wooden Shjips emerged on their first album with a manifesto for a simpler music. They had glimpsed the truth and it had two chords. Their first album charted the path to stoner nirvana through a set of tracks which all found their groove and stuck with it. And it really worked.

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