Don’t let the ‘y’ in his name lead you to be expecting sassy Swedish electro -pop. Robyn G Sheils is a singer-songwriter from Northern Ireland who deals in classic - and classically bleak - alt-country. His first LP was called “A Lifetime of Midnights” and the EP released on No Dancing is called “The Great Depression”. This is a very different kind of ‘dancing on my own’, one that involves shooting men and starting on evil young, death wishes and crosses to bear, cruel thoughts and counting the cost of mistakes. The five sombre tracks on “The Great Depression” remind me of Richmond Fontaine or The Felice Brothers at their most sparse. But rather than spinning heavily detailed yarns about characters and specific locations, Sheils goes for the universal: deceit, hard-luck and blame all passing between unnamed protagonists.
Early songs on the EP start are delivered by a full band, with a rosy warmth and recorded live feel to the spritely brushed drums, sparing piano and gently rising horns on lead track ‘When We Were Brothers’. As the EP progresses the instrumentation is stripped away so the final two songs are simply acoustic guitar and voice plus quivering bowed saw on ‘Hell Is...’ and gorgeous female vocals intertwining with Sheils’ own voice on ‘The Latest Greatest Comedienne’.
There is a weary creak and brittle confidence to Shiels’ voice that makes these songs ring with authenticity and bitter experience. If the subject matter sounds grim, then the intimacy of Shiels’ richly timbered, lean-close-into-your-ear tones make it a joy to lose yourself in its warm melancholy. With songs this strong, I’m not sure why I hadn’t come across Shiels before. It would be a shame (but not a surprise) if this was because of the parochialism of an English-centric music industry and media. As Shiels shows on this fine EP, this is music too good to be overlooked for petty reasons of geography.
“Idiot Guides and Plans” is the much-delayed second album from Gintis, a five piece band originally from Abergele in North Wales. An unassuming description like this doesn’t prepare you for just how special this album is or how moving its ten songs of downcast beauty and flawed humanity are. If Gintis don’t wear their nationality on their sleeves as much as other compatriots, they certainly put on open display the pained frustrations of small-town lives and thwarted ambitions.
All my initial listens to this album were in alphabetical rather than running order. So I’m going to need several more listens to correct my mistaken impression that ‘The Bakery Song’ is the fourth and not the opening song but let’s start there as it is a good example of the Gintis modus operandi.
It is a modest and on the face of it quite simple song which may send you in the direction of Gorky’s Zygotic Monkey at their softest and most filled with child-like wonder. But rather than gently psychedelic and pastoral, this song is a tale of humble domesticity gone awry. The loving detail of baking bread is celebrated before our protagonist is made redundant from the bakery by the newly opened supermarket, where to keep a roof above his family’s head he has to “swallow my pride / and work the rest of my life for a man I despise”. The songs finishes with swaying bah-bah-bah harmonies, lush steel guitar and gentle lilting organ underpinning a hope that “things might turn out better / if I could be a better man”. Simple living turns to drudgery at the hands of nameless corporations and the faint glow of optimism is bedevilled by human failing. All in 3 minutes 19 seconds. Not so modest then.
These chronicles of life at the bottom-of-the-heap are littered with seemingly mundane and domestic details: overdrafts, toothpaste, landlords, fairground waltzers, a Twister from the ice-cream van - but Gintis also pose big questions about the big themes in life, deterioration and death, faith and freedom, in the simplest of phrases. And despite entrapment by routine, fate or human failing, these muted and subtly orchestrated melodies are shot through with moments of transcendental beauty, ambition and even hope. Gintis also display a childish pettiness (the self-explantory ‘Your Brother’s A Prick’) or plain silliness (the shooby-doo celebration of ‘The Overdraft Song’) which only endears their very human flaws to me more.
‘Half As Much’, the true album opener, is a song about the interactions between technology and people much as Grandaddy sang about on “The Sophtware Slump”. It is a sparse, strummed lament to fax operators and data-input clerks made obsolescent by machinery. In capturing that moment were something is lost, it is touchingly nostalgic without being sentimental. As it progresses it becomes apparent the song is actually about a loss of communication and breakdown in a relationship (“running around trying to please the people / none of who love you half as much as I do”). Its quiet clenched-teeth determination is the closest Gintis come to rage at their lot. ‘I Think We’re Free’ encompasses scientific rationalism and existential doubt in a breezy three minute ditty that helps us hear an alternative version of what Euros Childs and Teenage Fanclub collaborating could sound like if the Jonny record didn’t exist.
The finale to the album is ‘Now I Know’. Remember how Stephen Malkmus in ‘Range Life’ unites slacker skate-boy cool with being in a band and makes it sound the best thing ever? Well ‘Now I Know’ trumps that. A near nine-minute anthem of band-mate solidarity and plea for unity sung over plaintive banjo, simmering organ and muted trumpet that swells to a rousing, self-affirming group chorus. If other songs leave you wanting to put a consolatory arm round Gintis’s crumpled shoulders, this song makes you want to link arms and join the head-held-high chant “one day / I hope / that everyone / can smile about it“.
The biography written by Carl from Gintis lists some of the bands’ ups and downs since recording first album “Happy Drunken Accidents” in 2006: “sadly an unfortunate amount of family circumstances, distance between band members, abject poverty, depression and even short periods of homelessness delayed completion of this album for 3 to 4 years”. Unhappy Sobering Mishaps? It gets worse: “It cost barely a penny to make this record, using borrowed instruments and relying heavily on the generosity of others (which is good, because the band have and continue to have nothing)”. The underachievers have tried harder and succeeded - I’m just not sure they know it yet. All credit to Fresh Hair Records for helping get this album released (on 11 April) but Gintis don’t need a sympathy vote, they need an immediate place in your record collection. Go and show them some love and cherish this record. Contender for album of the year?
The link to The Third Division EP by Greeks arrived in my inbox this afternoon. From awareness of the band's existence to listening to the music to writing this all happened in less than a quarter of a day. Such a speedy response seems fitting for something that was recorded a month ago and released just three days ago, free to download. And to this listener, something that came out of nowhere. Greeks may have been plotting this for years. Or it literally may be a creation of mere weeks – who knows. And the band don’t give too much away. On their Tumblr site the lengthiest post is from the day they went into the studio:
"If the desired effect is ‘fire’ then the ingredients are a 2003 Toshiba Satellite laptop computer (heat), Budweiser (fuel) and the works of Deerhunter, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and Pictureplane (oxygen)".
First track to put this formula to work is ‘A Ghoul! A Spook!’, a bluesy slab of primal garage thump, not unlike a higher fidelity Brown Brogues with more sneer and less growl or Sonny Boy Williamson cut-up by arty noiseniks. A fiery, feisty ball of seething attitude that had me hooked from the first listen. Ignition achieved I say. ‘Repeat On Three’ is where you hear the Deerhunter influence most; ‘King Warrior Magician Lover’ takes the JAMC drum machine and covers it with loud crackling guitars and more of that drawling sneer. ‘You Should’ve Hid Your Cypress Hill Cassettes’ never matches the promise of its title but Greeks have done enough already to impress so disappointment avoided.
In these four short tracks, Greeks bring together a rolling (Mancunian?) swagger to collide head-on with angular art-rock frazzle - and show off a myriad of alt-rock reference points along the way. Here's a band who could fill the support slot for either Times New Viking or Johnny Foreigner when they tour next month. It’s not a fully matured sound but its energy and potential overcome the moments where the song-writing doesn’t (yet) keep up.
The EP is so called because it was recorded in Hulme’s Third Division Studios – which are fictional. I hope this is a humorous nickname for someone’s bedsit rather than a fancy hoax. I so want this to be the start of a band who wants to play and to excite listeners rather than gain notoriety through mystique, misdirection or unfulfilled hype. I look forward to what promotion to a higher division brings with my fingers crossed and my hopes intact.
Like the multiple permutations of Palace that Will Oldham adopted for his first band, Daniel Smith has also been one for varying the calling card he operates behind. But wayward though he is in other ways, there is a distinct logic to the shifting monikers. The original Danielson Famile truly was Smith leading his siblings into song, Brother Danielson covers his solo efforts and Danielson (nee Danielsonship) is the vehicle for a heavier rock sound and an umbrella for multiple contributors and wider ‘family’ members (and of course when all three incarnations were brought together this was labelled Tri-Danielson). But for new album ‘Best of Gloucester County’ released this week (Fire Records in the UK, Smith’s own label Sounds Familyre in North America), Smith continues as on 2006’s ‘Ships’ to operate simply under Danielson.
If not quite the high-pitched shrieking on earlier records, the man-boy yowls and yodels are still intact and occasionally still disconcerting. So “Best of Gloucester County” sounds less the work of a crazed and raging fundamentalist pastor, and more that of a thoughtful and maturing idiot savant - if that’s not a contradiction. However one of the more straightforward songs ‘Grow Up’ is itself a contradiction: is it the Smith the adult who wrote the song or Smith the sneering brattish teen who sings who needs to grow up “whatever that means”?
In this and the denser rock songs like ‘Today Is A Loaf’ or ‘But I Don’t Want To Sing About Guitars’, the New Jersey-based ensemble come across like Daniel Johnston fronting The Cardiacs or even the arch cabaret-pop of Of Montreal without the flamboyance and make-up (Smith has always preferred matching uniforms or tree outfits). Set against this earnest complexity are the more playful, even playground, rhythms of coy friendship plea ‘Lil Norge’ or the "silly-string-and-streamers" rhumba of ‘Partay People’.
In the second half of the album the quieter and reflective ‘ You Sleep Now’ slips into the mystical drones of ‘Hovering Above That Hill’. The latter hums with tension, ringing bells and disembodied voices whilst different instruments drift in and out of ear-shot. The album closes with another stylistic changing-down of gear: the angelic strings and spiritual chants of ‘Hosanna in The Forest’. I guess you never lose that religious fervour.
Similar to his friend Sufjan’s last epic long-player, ‘Best of Gloucester County’ can be appear intimidating and impenetrable (although Smith keeps his album to a manageable 42 minutes – nearly half the length of “Age of Adz”). However get past Danielson’s twisting idiosyncrasies and there’s plentiful variety to engage and entertain. Who needs to grow up?
Just over three years after forming and on the back of two well-received earlier singles (‘They Transmit’ and ‘Klustered’), the debut long-player from Eat Lights Become Lights “Autopia” is released this week. But let’s start with lead track and single ‘Test Drive’. Despite the title there is absolutely nothing tentative or learner driver about this epic and infectious opener. It is a near six minute euphoric komische rush that surges with familiarity but still feels exhilaratingly fresh each time I hear it. Sublime, fizzing with energy and damn catchy.
The theme of travel is prevalent in other song titles too: ‘All Aboard’, ‘Muzik for Motorways’, ‘Monorail’. Which is appropriate for the trio (Neil Rudd providing guitars, programming and loops, Alex Baker on bass and Rob Hyde on drums) bring a propulsive, driving rock-band dynamic to these ten instrumental pieces. Kraftwerk may have written the definitive hymn to the autobahn but here Eat Lights Become Lights are sound-tracking a neon-lit, open-throttle dash along that long, empty concrete strip. Inspiration may come from slinky and cerebral German seventies electronica, but for the most part “Autopia” feels like a collection of restless rock songs built on urgent rhythms, glistening guitar riffs and adrenaline.
There are no second acts in American lives but there are in Manchester gigs. Having missed Colorama supported by Walton Hesse at The Castle in January, I was delighted to find Humble Soul were putting the same line-up on again tonight, this time at Sacred Trinity Church in Salford. And each time I return to this 18th century Grade 2 listed church on Chapel Street, I fall in love with it again – definitely one of my favourite gig venues. It feels welcoming to me not in a spiritual way (sorry Reverend) but in its friendly cosiness and beautifully-lit intimacy. The warm feeling I was experiencing was also helped by the Starry Night cask ale which sadly didn’t last until Walton Hesse took the stage.
It’s been way too long since I last saw the band. There’s no dramatic change to their sound in that time but plenty of new songs tonight (and none from the six track session they recorded twelve months ago). And like the return to Sacred Trinity, there is a real sense of homecoming in listening to this band. Overall Walton Hesse were in a quieter, more reflective vein– no full-out rocking numbers – but they effortlessly moved between eerie-harmonium-and-empty-spaces numbers to the intense droning (in the best sense of word) propulsion and twin guitars of final number ‘Walt’s Eleventh Dream’. This was wistful countrified Americana guitar rock at its finest - I cannot understand why larger indies like Loose Records or Bella Union are not beating a trail to their doors. Walton Hesse are recording and mixing now and there are hints of a single soon to be announced – maybe they are going their own way? My only complaint - the low levels of lighting: see for yourself.
I’m a late comer to Colorama’s “Box” album – Edwyn Collins’ favourite album of 2010 no less – and its gentle pop-psychedelia charms. However any knowledge of that album or the earlier releases is not needed. For tonight Carwyn Ellis announces they were going to preview their entire new album live. Playing as three piece, it is astonishing how accomplished and finished this new material sounds – nothing tentative, no false starts, no scrappy mistakes. The versatility of the three musicians supported the variety across this new album. The drummer doubled up on melodica and percussion as well as backing vocals, Carwyn swapped between acoustic and electric guitars and for one song the band used a drum machine but otherwise the trio kept the same playing configuration. The real versatility was in how the songs moved between Dylan-esque folk rock, innocent harmony-laden sunshine-pop, mysterious and intense pop-psyche and even one song sung in Welsh about “going out on the lash on a Friday” whose upbeat cheeriness made it sound more like a skipping country stroll than a night of drunkenness.
Great performances from both bands. Is it too much to hope that Humble Soul could put the same night on again in another three months? Please?
If you didn’t buy the debut album from Christopher Eatough on its 14 February release date then you’ve already lost three weeks of your life in which to immerse yourself in its sumptuous despondency. Time to catch up.
“A Creak In The Cold” is made up of ten hushed acoustic numbers, mainly finger-picked guitar and voice with occasional and restrained touches of violin, piano or drums. Eatough is not one to hide himself behind a stage name; and his songs possess a similarly direct, take-me-as-you-find-me honesty. This perfectly suits the late-night intimacy of these heart-felt confessionals and vodka-soaked tales of frailty and failure. But this is not to say this is an unremittingly bleak listen.
Sure there are farewells and quitters, aching livers and fragile hearts but there are also declarations and hopes and in ‘Southern State’ a love song shot through with cheery optimism. Even in those songs that dwell in the dregs of a whisky glass or behind the always-closed door, there is grace and beauty in the exquisite delicacy of the arrangements and the touching melodies. It is a record as bitter-sweet as Mark Eitzel yet without the grizzled anguish, as forlorn and intensely personal as Elliott Smith yet never despairingly nihilistic, and it also taps into previous generations of singer-songwriters: in ‘Devil’s Report’ I hear the comfort-blanket smoothness and melodic 70s soft-rock strains of David Gates’ Bread fighting against the lyrical rejection (just me that gets that reference then?).
“Please Listen Carefully” the cover of the lyric booklet states in block capital letters. Damn right.
Refreshed from a short post-release holiday, Christopher Eatough shares some reflections on the making of this album and about what’s next.
The album is nearly two years on from your self-released EP but it sounds as though recording it over Christmas 2010 happened swiftly. Has it felt a long or a quick process to make “A Creak In The Cold”?
It's definitely been a long process in the sense that the songs on the album span several years - the oldest, 'Between the Trees', I began to write almost 10 years ago - and it was always my intention to release them to the unsuspecting public as a single body of work. That the actual recording happened so swiftly over just a few months was due to logistics more than anything. I spent about 12 months finding the best way to record them, from working with The Answering Machine in their studio to setting up shop with a four track in my flat. In the end it was an email from Hero and All Round Good Chap David Jones, in which he offered to produce the album, that clinched it, and we started planning the recording in September 2010. Ultimately, it worked out better than I could have hoped, as recording the album in the freezing winter seemed wonderfully apt, and I think comes through on the record to an extent.
Tell us more about who is playing on the record? I suspect these are all friends and close associates rather than hired hands.
Indeed! I was keen to keep it as stripped back as possible, with most of the album just voice and guitar, but it seemed obvious when things started to come together that a little colour and texture wouldn't shatter the intimacy as I'd feared. So then it was just a case of asking some of more talented friends to drop into the studio one night and play a couple of parts which we could incorporate into the finished mix. My main partner in crime on the record is my good friend and violinist Clare Watson, who often plays live alongside me, but there are similar contributions from singer/songwriter Edmund Cottam, Ben Perry (of The Answering Machine fame) and my old bandmate Dan Reader. Getting an active band together, at least for studio work, is something I'm definitely considering for the future, but for the album it made sense to have just the bare bones of the songs.
Seven out of ten songs refer to booze. Is this more a device in your song-writing or does Alcoholics Anonymous beckon?
As much as I would love to claim the record as a concept album about my stage four liver cirrhosis, my penchant for whiskey hasn't quite reached such disastrous levels just yet. I think there's a theme throughout the record of self-destruction, both literal and metaphorical; that tendency to resort to self-pity and self-abuse when faced with hardship is quintessentially human, and as such utterly nonsensical. Alcohol as a lubricant to the wheels of despair is something with which most people are familiar (although I'm not sure if anyone has yet found that the world looks any better staring through the bottom of an empty glass). I should say that the caveat to much of this scrutiny is that, in truth, most of what I write is only semi-conscious and rarely considered. So maybe the references to alcohol say more about my habit of keeping a bottle within easy reach than I'd like to admit.
Some songs are written in the first person, others like ‘There Were No Ghosts’ are third person descriptions. Should anything be read into this?
People can read whatever they like into the songs; they are, after all, just songs. Almost all of them are written about a very specific person or event, but such things become lost within the songs as they grow and grow and I settle into them. By the time the songs have come of age and I'm comfortable that they're finished and ready to be unveiled, the lyrics are a combination of the real and the imagined. Often, the first person is a voice other than my own. ‘There Were No Ghosts’ is slightly at odds to the rest of the album in that it sprang from the novel “Lisey's Story” by Stephen King, which is the only real time I've written anything so direct and impersonal.
How did the tie-up with PYT Records come about? Who approached who?
The record deal was entirely due to the generosity and general goodwill of Dan and Hannah from the label. We'd gotten to know each other through mutual friends and my gigging around town, and they had a habit of waving my flag at any opportunity. Because they're brilliant. I'd been talking about the album for months when Dan approached me with a tentative suggestion of releasing the album on their fledgling label and it seemed like a no-brainer. It worked well for both of us: I think they were keen to distance the label side of things from the indiepop for which their club night and fanzine has become famous, while I obviously got the twin benefits of a professional release and their unerring support in an official capacity. They keep all the money for themselves, obviously, and are making me write a twee-pop album now, but that's just the price you gotta pay.
A Valentine’s Day release was entirely intentional I assume! Are you a romantic or a miserablist? Or is that a false distinction?
Ha. That was Dan's and Hannah's idea, and I had to agree that it was inspired. As for romantic or miserablist, that's certainly a false distinction. All romantics are inherently miserable. Romance is tragedy by its very nature; it's so separate from the reality of things, and bound to disappoint. That said, the endless references to heartbreak and despair which people direct at my music become tiresome. I'd like to think there's more to the album than just music for moping.
What has the experience of making “A Creak In The Cold” taught you? Is it too early to reveal any plans or thoughts about a second album?
Had I the time and resources, I'd be recording a second album right now. My one regret about “A Creak in the Cold” was the piece-meal approach that was necessary to record it. While I don't think the album suffered as a result - perhaps it even enhances it - the fact that most of it was recorded in snatched hours between a million other commitments, when I was exhausted or ill or broke or all three, was worrying. For any sort of follow up, I'd like to focus on recording the whole thing within a very short space of time, perhaps just a week or so, played live with a group of like-minded (and inevitably tolerant) folk. I write constantly, and I'm finding that a lot of stuff I'm coming up with at the minute is all sort of American gothic-tinged. I'd love to do an album based around that; the mid-west, the devil, the darkness. I think people have seen enough of my tearful eyes for now. It's time to start looking outwards.
Whilst Mr Eatough starts to look outwards, I’d strongly suggest you invest in a copy of “A Creak In The Cold” if you haven’t already and drink deep of those tearful eyes.
If you missed Colorama supported by Walton Hesse in January, well here's your second chance. Both bands are back playing Sacred Trinity Church in Salford on Friday 4 March. In a packed month of gigs it feels invidious to pick on just one - but not only a great line-up in a beautiful setting but a poster worth taking the time to share too.
Whether second chances or seeing new bands for the first time there is plenty of live music going on across the city this month. As ever a mixtape [53 mins / 61 MB] of bands playing Manchester this month to help inform your gig-going decision-making - link in the post below this one.
Manchester Gigs In Music Mixtape: March 2011
Crystal Stilts Love Is A Wave (26 Mar Ruby Lounge BUY TICKETS) Standard Fare Kudzu Girlfriend (2 Mar Night & Day BUY TICKETS) Tender Trap Do You Want A Boyfriend? (26 Mar Gullivers BUY TICKETS) Woods Blood Dries Darker (15 Mar Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS) Fiction To Stick To (4 Mar The Castle BUY TICKETS) Admiral Fallow Squealing Pigs (8 Mar Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS) Mitchell Museum Mission 1 (12 Mar Gullivers BUY TICKETS) Napoleon IIIrd The Unknown Unknown (11 Mar Islington Mill BUY TICKETS) Former Ghosts Us and Now (7 Mar Ruby Lounge BUY TICKETS) Fujiya + Miyagi Sixteen Shades of Blue (3 Mar Islington Mill BUY TICKETS) Cut Copy Where I'm Going (5 Mar Club Academy BUY TICKETS) The Phantom Band O (10 Mar Sound Control BUY TICKETS) Dan Michaelson & The CoastguardsLove Lends A Hand (9 Mar The Castle BUY TICKETS) Nodzzz True To Life (22 Mar Deaf Institute BUY TICKETS) Hannah Peel The Almond Tree (19 Mar Cross St Chapel BUY TICKETS) Aidan Moffat City of Love (13 Mar The Castle BUY TICKETS)
Don’t let the ‘y’ in his name lead you to be expecting sassy Swedish electro -pop. Robyn G Sheils is a singer-songwriter from Northern Ireland who deals in classic - and classically bleak - alt-country. His first LP was called “A Lifetime of Midnights” and the EP released on No Dancing is called “The Great Depression”. This is a very different kind of ‘dancing on my own’, one that involves shooting men and starting on evil young, death wishes and crosses to bear, cruel thoughts and counting the cost of mistakes. The five sombre tracks on “The Great Depression” remind me of Richmond Fontaine or The Felice Brothers at their most sparse. But rather than spinning heavily detailed yarns about characters and specific locations, Sheils goes for the universal: deceit, hard-luck and blame all passing between unnamed protagonists. 
