Beadle Bumble's About

Well, this is the only record review I've ever done for Nightshift. I must have got excited by the prospect, because I wrote something pretty florid. But, hey, it's a very nice record, and sometimes I'm just in a good mood, I guess.

THE WORKHOUSE – FLYOVER

Last month’s cover story aside, The Workhouse is Oxford’s great forgotten band. Despite ten years of beautiful music, they rarely seem to be discussed, don’t appear in any pundit’s Top Local Acts list, and to our knowledge are yet to instigate reams of grammatically dubious yabber on the city’s internet message boards. Whilst this is partly due a sporadic gig schedule and a generally unassuming nature (come on, they look like old rockabillies who should be clogging up Cornmarket, not a vital force in new music) this record should hopefully bring them a whole raft of new admirers even as it jogs more age-ravaged memories.

Flyover, like most of their work, shows strong textural sensibilities along with a penchant for racks of guitar pedals with big dials reading “scintillate”. The first references to spring to mind are, as ever, The Cocteau Twins and their 4AD cousins, but something in the stringent, even brutal, sparseness on display proves there’s more to it than that: Liz Fraser’s emotive glossolalia would sound bombastic amongst the glacial severity of Flyover’s hyperborean sonic architecture. Opener “Chancers” is a stately waltzing shimmer that could easily soundtrack the death dance at the end of The Seventh Seal, whereas “Sellafield” has a widescreen Morricone austerity that recalls obscure East European ambienteers The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa. It’s not all icy emptiness, though, and despite the paucity of vocals this album is packed with songs, such as “Twinkling Lights”, boasting a simple heart-tugging melody worthy of Kraftwerk.

It could be claimed that The Workhouse’s output is a dispassionate essay in the distanced and clinical, but it’s all so oddly moving. The German Romantics knew that nothing said so much about humanity than huge paintings of uncaring mountainsides, and so The Workhouse realise that dignified melancholy can touch the listener more than countless emo screamers in Clubs That Cannot Be Numbered. It’s time for Oxford’s Nick Hornbies to rewrite their lists of favourite bands. Just watch that the tearstains don’t smudge the ink, Flyover can sneak up and have that effect. Do excuse us we..we think we’ve got something in our eye…