THIRD TIME LUCKY

Well, it’s been a long while but there’s no denying it; it’s high time we had a look at how Stovepony’s rising sons The Lucky Strikes have been getting along. Having spent a long weekend in February at erstwhile Hawkwind, Groundhogs and Amon Duul II bassist Dave Anderson’s Foel Studio, laying down tracks for their third album, now titled Gabriel, Forgive My 22 Sins, things are now stepping up a gear. Like its predecessor, The Chronicles Of Solomon Quick, Gabriel… is a concept, based on the life of boxer Frankie Valentinez and the battle for his soul. As with the difference between their eponymous debut and Solomon…, the trajectory continues to route away from noisy garage-blues in the direction of wider-screen folk and country influences, no doubt helped by Big Jim Wilson’s flying fiddle as lead instrument. However, be assured that that killer blues punch is, largely thanks to Will Bray’s Bonhamesque drumming, still firmly at the album’s core. As befits the album’s theme, there’s a strong undercurrent of gospel, as could be found in the music of Dyaln and The Band, later in Green On Red (circa the masterful The Killer Inside Me) and The Gun Club, and later still in Arcade Fire.

The songs are all team efforts, lyrically split 50/50 between singer and guitarist Matt Boulter and guitarist and keyboard player Dave Giles. But so meticulously executed are they, so seamless the album’s flow, it’s impossible to tell who’s responsible for which, or to choose a favourite. But the opening ‘The Boxer, The Bribe And A Father’ displays a new complexity and confidence in the band’s writing, ‘Codeine’ stirs tense emotions, while the rambunctious ‘Easily, Easily Until It’s Done’ and the hymnal ‘Slowly The Night Fades’ (an Xmas single in waiting, if ever there was one) show that they’re already writing with the greater audience in mind. Indeed, prior to the album’s release in January 2011, the band will birth their debut (download-only) single ‘We Are Waves’ on 15 November. The last track on the album and, like ‘Paranoid’, something of an afterthought, ‘…Waves’ has, to use an aching cliché, hit written all over it. Of course, it probably won’t be a hit. And there’ll be no dodgy ‘Lucky Strikes For Xmas No 1’ Facebook groups, that’s for sure. But those who take the trouble to hear the song – perhaps encouraged by Boulter’s recent shows providing lap-steel for Simone Felice, or by one of the many shows the band has been playing in the run-up to the release – should feel that they’ve heard something rather special. The album will serve to confirm that.

Cast Adrift

A thousand apologies, gentle reader, for neglecting this blog. Well, I haven't really been neglecting it. I've been waiting for something to write about. Well, I thought I had something to write about, but it just didn't come to pass.

I thought musicians were crying out to release a record. Not so, apparently. I thought I'd found someone pretty damned perfect. I unexpectedly caught her set at one of the fortnightly Dog Fish Trombone nights that happens uptairs at a wine bar on The Strand. I'd gone down there to check out a rare headline show by Simon James Onions but was blown away by a young lass from the North-West who played just before, singing her own songs, mostly, and accompanying herself on mandolin. She had that wonderful kind of folky voice, lightly accented, slightly approximately pitched, with an otherworldly vagueness. She looked a lot like a young Anne Briggs and her take on New Order's 'Love Vigilantes' gave me goosebumps. I began hatching a plan there and then to put her record out. But despite an early smattering of contact via Myspace and email, the line's gone dead. I'm bummed, frankly. But if she don't wanna, she don't wanna. Perhaps boosted by my overtures, she's reckoning on holding out for bigger things, and who can blame her: they'll surely come. As for me, I can wait, but in the meantime, I'm going to jealously guard her identity. Suffice to say, if you manage to catch her, I know you'll dig her too.

So, with that out of the way, I can tell you that I was pleased last weekend to attend the launch of Stokey legends Monkey Island's new album Luxe et Redux at Karma Studios. I'd seen them described in listings as 'garage blues', which might be helpful to some, but is in fact very wide of the mark. They might have one foot in the garage and another in the art school, but something in between - I can't yet work out if it's the brain or the genitals - in a very sinister laboratory indeed. So yeah, it's pretty garagey, but at the same time it draws on the angular post-punk of Wire and the frantic crunchiness of old-skool thrash. The three of them certainly played their arses off but the set was all too short. However, they're gigging like blue-arsed flies lately, so plenty of other chances to catch them, not least at Biddle's on 3 April.

Finally, while I'm here, I might as well drop a plug for one of the two best bands in the UK right now, the fabulous Wolf People, who have a vinyl compilation of their earlier CDs out on Jagjaguwar. It's called Tidings and is, of course, superb. Well done them!