Tag: alt rock

Courting Ghosts Debut Album: Falling My Friend

Images used with kind permission of Pacific Curd Photography

West Wilts and Somerset folk-rock collective Courting Ghosts are about to release their debut album, Falling my Friend in June…..

If the name Courting Ghosts conveys something twisted and gothic, the band name may be a smidgen deceiving to their style. Subjective though, what’s in a name; if I was courting a ghost I’d imagine she’d be the scariest, like The Lady in White, mysteriously motionless with unkempt hair over her face; creepy stuff like that. Whereas if Lindisfarne were courting a ghost it’d likely be Casper!

I’m thinking there’s more Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze shenanigans going on here than either The lady in White or the friendly ghost, because, whilst Lindisfarne can be rather quirky seventies, yet are undeniably an accolade to UK folk-rock, Courting Ghost’s Falling my Friend is earnest and steadfast, feelgood folk integrity; no messing about. The narrative is amorous and the ambience refreshingly strolling along the sunny side of the street. Your pottery is going to be smooth listening to this at the wheel, Demi!

I’m getting more the romanticism of Springsteen, the breeze of Tom Petty, and the drift of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Still, the Americana component is subtle at best, in sound the balance tips largely on the UK folk scene, particularly of their roots in the West Country. So let’s lob in the honesty of Hothouse Flowers too, for good measure. It’s a gentle flow rather than all twangy banjos and knee-slapping, for sure.

Image: Pacific Curd Photography

Frontman and guitarist Chris Hoar and Marcel Rose on acoustic guitar hail from Trowbridge, and they make the original duo. The five-piece was formed a little under two years ago by networking via open mics. Dave Turner on keys and backing vocals from Frome, bassist Andy Maggs from Bath. Drummer Tim Watts, while skiving off the photoshoot, provides the Devizes connection. Combined it’s a force of professionalism. Additions to the line-up includes Holly Carter, a marvel on the peddle steel, and a rather splendid guest vocalist who will be revealed shortly!

Courting Ghosts are not trying to bedazzle you with daring experimentation or cryptic wordplay, it’s an elementary formula. This is walking back to your festival tent after a mellowed afternoon music. It’s unassuming, tranquil. It’s dew on the grass precipitating under a spring sunrise. 

They kick it off with the luxuriate title track, nine others succeed and follow suit. Every Time, the third song in, raises the bar with a particularly beguiling hook. Following this Close my Eyes ups the sentimental notch a level. A ballad with delicate keys, vocally harmonised to perfection with the fantastic Lorna, one half of the duo Fly Yeti Fly.

Image: Pacific Curd Photography

She’s Alright, some eight tunes along this beautiful journey is as uptempo as it gets, at least it rolls on the strings. It’s an unspecified ode to that one person who will always cheer you up. Sentiments abound is a running theme, as it cools to a close with an air of feelgood ambience. 

If you catch them gigging, the CD will be available to buy in June, I suggest you treat yourself and your drive home through our rolling downs will be complemented with an apt soundtrack. Courting Ghosts are going to drop a track per month on Spotify starting from the end of May, with the whole album becoming available for streaming planned for September or October. Keep up-to-date on this album by checking the band’s socials, Facebook. Instagram. 

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Keeping Secrets; New Single from Life in Mono

I do believe I got a taste of this new single when I saw Bristol’s premier symphonic grunge collective, Life in Mono at Bradford Roots, and was held spellbound…..

And I’m not usually in for Seattle Sound, but Life in Mono are the kind of layer-building specialists who could turn Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid into ripped jeans and flannel shirt-wearing grunge kid crowd surfers! In an Evanescence fashion they’ll take three minutes to build the ambience then bring the guitars crashing, and the result is sublimely encapsulating.

Filled to the brim with brooding noir drama and sensually immersive grunge, the secret is out, Life in Mono is gorgeously intertwined enchantment, and this is one finely-produced tune which expands to fill the room, as choranaptyxic as the Occamy, for want of a less Pottermaniac analogy! 

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NervEndings Launches Scathing Attack on Music Industry Chancers and Charlatans

Oh, do you suffer for your art? Are you told it’s all a labour of love? You are not alone, but more often than not, it is a sad reality, unfortunately. The disappointment of those with stars in their eyes, the general assumption you’re a monkey, available to be hoodwinked and willing to accept peanuts for your toils, is no new thing across all mediums, but it’s not getting any easier, quite the opposite. If anything it makes you want to scream “someone’s got to say something about it……”

Enter left, Swindon alt-blues rock trio NervEndings, who on Friday (6th October 23) launch their latest single, Democracy Manifest, for if no creative industry is hit worse from this plague of con artists than the music one, they thought better than to take it lying down, and write a bullet-biting song about unrequited love, or imaginings on how the world can be a happier place. Democracy Manifest rolls through you like a haunting wake up call, it’s of the Rage Against the Machine or Levellers level of energy and bitterness, and it attacks “the dark side of the music scene.”

This belting four minutes of bluesy, riff-laden vexation is said by the band to be “a direct response to real-world theft and deceit that occurs far too often in our local music scenes,” and if I shudder with irony to say you can pre-save it on Spotify here, though I do hope the band will consider Bandcamp too, what I believe to be the lesser of evils in an online era, though I accept perhaps not the most popular; sign of said times, but I still favour it.

Active on our local scene and never without a dynamic show, NervEndings have the energy and gusto of the Deftones or Foo Fighters, so the theme is apt, as if the fury of what they witness is captured in a bottle. It’s a charging single, a welcome return to recordings for this prevalent and le dernier cri band, echoing throughout local venues.  

Vocalist and guitarist Mike Barham expresses his thinking, “We all have this rose-tinted view of our own scenes sometimes and we hope that everyone is in it for the same love of the music that brings us to it in the first place. But the ugly truth is that some people just see music scenes as a way to extort people, to make a quick buck and abuse their power. We couldn’t stand for that any more.”

“I got sick and tired of watching certain people taking our younger bands for granted, people getting lost in a cycle and we wanted to give them a song to rally behind. This is our way of telling anyone who wants to get involved in making and celebrating music, in whatever form, that the abusers, the thieves and the liars will always be weeded out one way or another.”

But Mike, I’m a paranoid old hippy, getting my coat! I hope he knows what doughnut I’m referring to, and post-lockdown it felt acceptable, though the subsequent year they blagged further and I put my foot down. Resonating the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again, they might trick me, once, but if the message in this song gets through to the guilty and causes them to think otherwise, then your excellence is done. But furthermore it stands as a warning to those who may fall into the trap, and I salute you for it. 

What maybe more is, standalone, it’s the belting slice of energy and encapsulating tune, resounding the millennial underground bands with thickly applied layers dropping into calm and rising with passion and fire, we most likely need right now. Pre-save this whopper with charcoaled fries.

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Lady Nade at Devizes Arts Festival

If the opening Friday evening of Devizes Arts Festival was amazing for lively pirate-punk craziness, Saturday night was too for precisely opposite reasons. Bristol’s soulstress…

LilyPetals Debut EP

One of many young indie bands which impressed me at Bradford Roots Festival, and proof there’s more than the name suggests at The Wiltshire Music…

Courting Ghosts Debut Album: Falling My Friend

Images used with kind permission of Pacific Curd Photography West Wilts and Somerset folk-rock collective Courting Ghosts are about to release their debut album, Falling…

The Space Between Mike Clerk Ears….

My teenage daughter’s banter knows no limits. Upon noting I was wearing a logoed T-shirt the Swindon sound system “Mid Life Krisis” kindly sent, she responded thus; “you can’t wear that, you’re too old for a midlife crisis!” There comes a time in life when you have to cut your losses, realise there’s no longer a point in assessing prospects and goals, and getting upset you failed to reach them. The anguish of youth is but a fleeting memory, and you’re numb to life, rather than wallowing in self-pity you’re neither here nor there on achievements and failures, simply plodding on worrying more about earwax or teeth issues.

It’s the reason I absorb indie-rock with a squint, but then I’ve never felt like barging through pedestrians like Richard Ashcroft, ignorant to the fact others have issues far outreaching my own. I cannot abide themes of despair and downright dark subject matter without reasonable motive; they do nothing to cheer me up. Music from my childhood spat rebellious notions that the world was shit, then electronica came and we went off into the fields and warehouses waving our arms in the air, throwing our troubles away. There was never despair on the rave scene, no woeful self-analysis and no political tirade, until they came for us.    

Yet to expect a thoroughly negative review from me is rare, and for the debut album of Mike Clerk, The Space Between my Ears, I have to confess it does what it says on the tin, and does it very well. There’s thoughtful prose, if rather negatively, but it doesn’t trudge on as my niggling criticisms over much indie; at times there’s uplifting riffs, but the theme is unfortunately despondent. Has Mike never heard of the “every cloud” idiom?  

Many, say younger people, will love this with bells on, though, and for that much this is a damn fine album, if not my cup of tea. See, I like it when our George Wilding does melancholy in a pub, because he does it so well. Heck, the guy even bought me to reconsidering the worth of Radiohead! And similarly, there’s a tinge of euphoria in the way this former frontman of The Lost Generation, plays this out, musically. Lyrically I was left waiting for the silver lining, which simply doesn’t arrive, and this does nothing for maintaining my interest.

The proficiency and skill on show here is top dollar, Clerk has a blinding pedigree of experience in the music industry; the band played exclusive gigs for the NME, Alan McGee’s Death Disco club nights, and Clerk had a close call with guitar duties for Primal Scream. A GoFundMe campaign put the ball in motion for his solo career, The Space Between My Ears was the result, released yesterday (26th March.)

Written and recorded almost-entirely by Clerk at his own home studio, additional drum sessions took place at the local YMCA in Kirkcaldy. With contributions from sound-engineer Alan Ramsey, the album was mastered by Pete Maher of whom has the likes of The Rolling Stones, U2, and Paul Weller on his résumé. This stamp of professionalism shows through in the rewarding sound.

I’m supposing lockdown has bought a natural movement towards misery. Clerk’s words inspired by isolation and the endless roll of apocalyptic news, flow aptly into these themes of redemption, mental health and addiction. If here’s alt-rock’s mainstay, the desolation of unhappiness, I’m going to criticise it. Yes, The Space Between My Ears delivers an acute and perfected mind-set of the human psyche, but like watching a perpetual boxset of EastEnders, it does nothing to turn that frown upside down. And for me, there’s a crucial element to life sorely missing here. Laughter is the best medicine, even if it’s insane giggling like The Joker.

Yet I confess, I like the blues, I like how every morning Muddy Waters wakes up his woman is gone and his dog has died, I crave his misfortune. There’s something beguiling in that authentic twangy guitar sound, which the electric drone of cantankerous indie or alt.rock doesn’t appeal in quite the same manner. Not for me at any rate, but if it does for you, I would ignore the bleating rant of a grouch who’s watching fifty rush over a mountain swiftly towards him, as this album divinely flows and clearly has perfected the art of it!

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