The Oxford Fringe Preview Comedy Festival starts on Friday, and runs throughout July. I urge you to buy a ticket or two, some of the shows are going to be excellent.
THE AUTUMN SAINTS – WIND BURN & BROKEN OAK (Man In The Moon Records)
‘I Am The Gadfly’, the second track on The Autumn Saints' debut album, has a title that looks like it belongs to a 300-year-old folk tune, and a guitar part that bears a strong - though almost certainly coincidental - resemblance to lesser-known Fall song ‘Green Eyed Loco-Man’. It’s a strange contrast, but one which sums up the band’s unique sound, which might best be described as a good-natured tussle between windswept Americana and the mournfully literate end of early-80s indie and post-punk. This is embodied in frontperson Britt Strickland, whose doleful North Carolinian vocal sounds as though it should be hollering a lament from an Appalachian foothill, but whose reverby 8-string bass resembles Adam Clayton auditioning for Bauhaus.
The twelve tracks of this recording offer some prime examples of their approach, from ‘Up In Rags’, which sounds like something from folk melancholia classic Fables Of The Reconstruction by fellow Southern gothic poets R.E.M. as played by Simple Minds at the world’s biggest stadium, to heavy-set paean to simple traditions ‘Greenhorn’ (though your cloth-eared and somewhat peckish reviewer heard it as “cream horn”). There are also hints of 50s balladry on tracks like ‘She Wanders Out’ and ‘Too Late Tonight’ which give a dewy-eyed nod to the likes of Dion and Del Shannon, rock ‘n’ roll’s original sadbois. The only track that doesn’t quite gel is ‘The Lieutenant’, an awkward plod which doesn’t seem sure whether it wants to start a hoedown at a barn dance or sport a back-comb at The Batcave, but this is the exception on a very strong album, which doesn’t sound quite like anything previously released in the history of Oxford. Or possibly anywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment