JOHNNY 5TH WHEEL AND THE COWARDS Music To Shake 'n' Shuffle To

‘Happy Clappy/Doom Jazz’ is the third track on the second collection from Lancashire's Johnny5thWheelandthecowards. Well, if the cap fits... the title of that breezy brass-and-harmonica party hoe-down doubles nicely as a musical summary of a good part of this rum collection of vaudevillian cabaret pop. But it’s not all rag-time japes - said song also contains the line “Bad juju on the rise / feels like Crowley is pissing in my eyes" neatly demonstrating how everything is not as straightforward as it first appears in the looking glass world of Mr 5thWheel and his merry troubadours. This dark-and-light album follows earlier singles including the AA side ‘Nancy/In My Laboratory’ (“Jacques Brel quietly rakish with a folky air” and “a nifty piece of boffin-pop” respectively was the opinion here back in May) and is a piquant smorgasbord of tall tales, askance observations and relationships-with-a-twist delivered with some fine enunciation (no lyric sheet needed here).

So this 36 minute, 12 song sojourn includes stop-overs for the tipsy piano-and-barbershop apology (to a son or family pet?) of 'Spike' and the 3am agree-to-disagree relationship soft-shuffle duet/duel of ‘Conversations With You When You're Not There’; the smoky suburban crime jazz-blues of ‘Where Did I Sleep Last Night?’, the cafe accordion waltz of self-doubt ‘My Finest Hour’ and the bowed saw wail of country lament ‘Blame In Campodia’. Maybe not as deviant or wildly maverick as their copy book suggests, the knotty moods and assorted settings for songs are as varied as the appropriated styles.



As the skiffle-calypso of ‘Yes We're Stealing Your Soul’ admits: “Yes we're stealing your soul / but you were pissing it down the drain”. For a nation of time-wasters listening to too much mainstream earnest ‘indie’ ear-drool, Johnny5thWheelandthecowards should be a “stout and red wine mixed” antidote of clever, engaging pop. Sadly their sweetly companionable if not wholly soul-stealing tune-smithery will probably go over-looked.



Johnny5thWheelandthecowards Music To Shake 'n' Shuffle To [BUY]

ANJA MCCLOSKEY An Estimation

Anja McCloskey has a distinctive and far-from-average background: a German-American accordion player raised in Northern Germany and based in Southampton for the last decade. She is also a well-seasoned musician – moving from childhood orchestral playing to two previous UK bands (“avant-garde performance orchestra The Irrepressibles and folk-rock trailblazers Haunted Stereo”). Despite her debut album "An Estimation" being released on alt-folk independent label Sotones, she was first introduced to me as "if you like Sharon van Etten...". And indeed she straddles both these reference points, from moody, thoughtful baroque-pop through to earthy folk polkas and more.

The twelve track album, released on CD and digitally, starts with a rousing, strident flourish: the thickly European, almost Balkan, instrumental stomp of 'Decision'. For the remaining tracks, McCloskey and her band - double bass, violin, electric and acoustic guitar alongside the accordion - keep these wild gypsy cabaret impulses more in check to provide a tense, compressed underscore. The energetic wheeze of the accordion, the dramatic twitching of the violin and the insistent percussive tap all contrast with McCloskey's sweeping, romantic tones – although I did get swept up in mood rather than lyrics for many songs.


The songs are a cohesive, balanced collection, a set of well-ordered folk-dances that appear alike on first encounter but slowly reveal the subtle differences in tempo, mood and pattern. Amongst the slower numbers are the eerie glide of ‘Tornado’, the sighing poignant drone of ‘And Her Head’ and the regal piano of ‘Tagetes’. Amongst the more continental, mid-tempo repertoire is the woozy cafe-bar chanson of tragic lover’s tale ‘Blinded By Blue’ and the jaunty ripples of ‘Italian Song’. Elsewhere the countrified, flightiness of ‘Instigate It’, the delicate mournfulness of ‘Quite Low’ or the alluring flutter of ‘Ivory’ could easily sit in a collection of femme freak-folk, antique or otherwise. Stand-out track for me and released as a single earlier this year is ‘A Kiss’ when the gypsy swirl, allure and danger previously held in check is spun out to dramatic effect.



“An Estimation” is a distinctive and highly accomplished record and one I'd recommend trying out. Anja McCloskey may not trouble Sharon van Etten in the Pitchfork hipper-than-thou sweetheart stakes but with moments like ‘A Kiss’, when you feel the passionate concentration of her disparate influences in full force, such a moment may yet come.



Anja McCloskey An Estimation [BUY]

JOHNNY 5TH WHEEL & THE COWARDS Nancy / In My Laboratory

This - the third single from their forthcoming second album - is my first proper listen to Prestonian pranksters Johnny 5th Wheel And The Cowards. Or as the band would have it johnny5thwheelandthecowards. The first song on this AA release is not packed so heel-to-toe tightly as that compressed version of their name. ‘Nancy’ turns out to be a leisurely unfolding tale of “a man obsessed / by a dream of a girl possessed” featuring librarians, a giant eye-ball and an abrupt ending. For all the dressing-box flamboyance to their self-proclaimed 'steampunk-doom-jazz', this oddity is more modest, a meeker Jacques Brel quietly rakish with a folky air.





Companion piece, and more obvious single material, is ‘In My Laboratory’, a nifty piece of boffin-pop that combines ‘Monster Mash’ silliness and groove with the playful seriousness of fellow contraption-wrangler Thomas Truax. For all the surreal lunacy of said laboratory ( “10,000 purple moon-bears dance for me / Genghis Khan is coming round for tea”), it’s also a playground where its mad scientist “could do anything”. These two brief tracks, despite their idiosyncratic charms, don’t have the space to push all those boundaries yet but this tantalising teaser bodes well for September’s sophomore album. The single is out on 25 June via Sotones.



Johnny 5th Wheel And The Cowards Nancy/In My Laboratory [BUY]