The Sparrow & The Workshop – Sleight Of Hand EP

The Sparrow & The Workshop - Sleight Of Hand

For all the times when it’s just easier to listen to a bunch of records by artists you know – or you know you’ll like – just to save the effort of working at something entirely new, there are those times when you feel thoroughly rewarded for stepping right outside your comfort zone. While there’s nothing notably revolutionary about Anglo/Scottish/American trio Sparrow & The Workshop, one listen to their debut EP Sleight of Hand reveals this to be one of those rare occasions where encountering an entirely unknown quantity pays dividends.

Sonically they bear some resemblance to the kind of stirring Scottish indie-folk peddled by excellent Bella Unionites My Latest Novel - disarmingly simple songs that build to huge multi-instrument crescendos – but shot through with a medieval gothic sensibility that lends a convincing creepiness to the vocal harmonies that gently introduce opener ‘Devil Song’ before it bursts into life as a full-on four-to-the-floor stomp. Although not an obvious reference point on first listen the male-female vocal interplay that peppers Sleight Of Hand is at times reminiscent of that of Low, but shorn of the heartstopping intimacy of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk’s whispered nothings and riding the crest of muscular folk arrangements they acquire a different energy, simultaneously barbed and soothing in the same breath. The unusual juxtaposition of both American and Scottish voices lends curious a sense of placelessness to ‘Gun Song’ and ‘I Will Break You’, even as their instrumentation and distinctive harmonies belie the connection to a peculiarly British folk lineage.

Indeed, it is these tiny contradictions that make The Sparrow & The Workshop’s music so enjoyable, and promising of greater things to come. Whilst certainly not the most roll-off-the-tongue band name, the more I hear it the more appropriate it seems – suggestive as it is of a placing of two seemingly separate items alongside each other, but which gradually seem to acquire a connection over time; the natural and the mechanical, the play off between British musical heritage and a soft American accent, love as crime, and the most unsettling of murder ballads sung in the sweetest of voices. It will be interesting to see where they go next.

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