Trembling Bells are not a phenomenon that I've really been aware of until this year. I'm catching on late as Dungeness, just out, is their sixth album in all, they've worked with Bonnie Prince Charlie and been endorsed by Stewart Lee and Stuart Maconie along the way and create a big, (undeniably pretentious), but highly distinctive Folk Prog sound.
Christ's Entry Into Govan, the quite brilliant single which heralded it at the turn of the year is probably the most conventional thing on here, and it's not really conventional at all, except in the way that it recalls that strange time at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies in the UK when quite batty Folk acts would find themselves in the UK charts and on Top of the Pops.
It's here and on I'm Coming where the band push forward Lavinia Blackwall, their wonderfully pure- throated singer, undeniably reminiscent of Sandy Denny in her prime and the band aspire for and achieve the wondeful otherness of Fairport Convention at their peak. In the video the band dance in kaftans with flowers in their hair across a sunny meadow.
Elsewhere Prog often takes centre stage. Not generally a style of music that floats my boat much but there's something that's quite infectious and immersive about the way that the band handle it. Blackwall transmutes into Shocking Blue's Mariska Veres or Grace Slick by turns and the band generate a series of Medieval metal hoedowns.
They will probably enrage many. Drummer, main songwriter and leader Alex Nielson is ludicrously pretentious in interviews about the cultural and literary inspirations and allusions of their work.They're somehow made for The Quietus, the modern online site that faultlessly documents the obscure and arcane and suitably that august journal bites, giving the band no end of documentation and Dungeness a fully appreciative, thumbs up review.
I have to say I concur too. But not really because of its affectations so much as the fact that it's just a big bold, proud and thoroughly enjoyable record. A band having no end of fun with the treasure chest of Folk, Prog and alternative possibilities and dressing up and frolicking across car parks and fields in ludicrous outfits in their promo videos. It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment