Four new albums from Bristol bands… reviewed
A hot summer and some warm releases from the West Country, Elfyn Griffith bends an ear…
Silenzio and the Night‘s frontman Keith Bailey is a veteran of the Bristol indie scene and brings his talent to the fore in his current band’s debut album The Harmonic Pull, released in May on bandcamp silenziomusic.bandcamp.com
This is English eccentricity and wistfulness of the Divine Comedy mold with a vocal that harks a bit to Morrissey and Hanlon in the early numbers, but with avant garde and bucolic breakouts and interludes. Shades of Blur/Albarn at their/his most intimate are also there and a hauntingly insistent violin colours all of the tracks.
Pungent Pulse opens with that Smiths feel, guitars, violin and drums fuelling it along with a moreish rhythm. The vocally vivid, slowly building atmosphere of Calling Today, the languid vocals and sombre mood of Lonely Island, Gone with it’s hark back to early Bowie even (lyrically and vocally) with it’s quaint lovely British theatricality. And then the first of the three instrumentals, which are perhaps an indulgence but there and kind of weird and noirishishly atmospheric, jazzy, cinematic and moody.
Strange is atmospheric and hypnotic, Dry Fear (Berlin Code) a minimalistic Krautrockish radio frequency doodle, and then back to the ballads, the pieces: All Change, very Albarn, violin and vocal poignancy, touching break-up blues, End Of The Day and Torn, similar veins, begining plaintively and changing tones and mood, dramatically for the former and jauntier for the latter.
Stone, Paper is sinisterly oddball and Leviathan a tale of the sea in Fall style. It’s an interesting album, one that takes risks within its own very defined languid and dramatic styles. As Keith says: “Film soundtrack music has been a huge influence on our tunes, whether it’s telling a story with the lyrics, or expressing a certain mood in a short space of time, with (hopefully) memorable melodies, harmonies and rhythms”. Bravo!
Follow them on: silenzioandthenight
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Goldfinches‘ singer/songwriter and guitarist Shaun McCrindle, a former member of The Blue Aeroplanes, has been active in several bands in the city plying his craft over the years. Goldfinches new album Shanti Time was also released earlier this summer. ukgoldfinches.bandcamp.com/album/shanti-time
McCrindle has the gift of the singer-songwriter with songs and tunes that are insistently catchy and memorable, wearing their influences on their respective sleeves.
None more so than the third track Magical Smile – following on from the Irish-jig opener The Old World and the poignant title track Shanti Time, – which has strong echoes of Steely Dan in its feel, structure and vocals. A deep bass and a great break flooding in with those familiar rhythms…
The dramatic comic-opera of Impossible, with double-bass player James Anderson’s gruff old Bohemian vocal insert echoes Topol’s Fiddler on the Roof, while Queen of New York is imbued with a classically addictive underground acoustic hook which sticks in the mind.
The 60’s pop feel of Weird Jean harks to The Coral complete with a Hank Williams twanging guitar thrown in and McCrindle’s evocative and humorous lyrics (‘She took marine biology and with healthy irony she felt herself drawn to the water…’).
The vignette of humdrum existence Indifferent Day and the Spanish epic, again, 60’s groove of Fantastic Creature, precedes the beautiful folky bluesy Americana of The Salt Path, McCrindle joined by the captivating female vocals of Freddie Bullough, and the violin and bouzouki of Paul Meager and John Slattery painting the picture.
Follow them on ukgoldfinches
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Enough of vocals, as we go to The Brackish’s psych-instrumental sound and the intricate weaving of the most dexterous guitar patterns by, surely, Bristol’s Mr Guitar, Neil Smith.
New album Pack it in My Liege, which will be released in November on Pig Records, but I have had a sneak preview, is sublime musicianship verging on and dipping into heavy and prog but with the inventiveness and freedom of jazz. Building on and adding to their five previous albums, this is a sound that is as innovative and experimental as it is beguiling and seductive. Live they’re a sonic force, and this Lp captures that adventurous spirit.
The interplaying between Smith, other guitarist Luke Cawthra, bassist Jacob Tyghe and drummer Matt Jones is mesmerising…be prepared!
Follow them: thebrackish.co.uk
Smith’s other band (among many – he is also guitarist with This Is The Kit) Sliders debut album (just called Sliders), just out also on pigrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sliders sees him again doing wonderful things, from the acid-house/jazz/ambient soundscape of Jumper, to the heady, minimalistic, Kraftwerky complexity of Kraut Crouch, the tongue-in-cheek surreal homage to the Hulk, Rhumba for Mr Hogan (just as it says on the tin), the out-there innovations of Improv#z and finally a novel, paired-down, bluesey becoming-ecstatically-menacing-and-dreamy, version of The Fall’s Hip Priest …
Follow them: https://www.facebook.com/profile.
So, there you have it, Bristol Cream in every way….
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Words by Elfyn Griffith. Elfyn tweets here
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