ahab – Nice’N’Sleazy, Glasgow. Sunday 13th October

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A heads up for this gig coming up on Sunday which is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor for this band who are well placed to follow the likes of Mumford and Sons and The Avett Brothers into popular acclaim. Ahab started off busking in London and then got a great lift playing at Fairport’s Cropedy Festival back in 2010. Who should be watching them but “whisperin’ Bob Harris who promptly invited them onto his radio show which led to them releasing an E.P produced by John Leckie.
ahab are well placed to capitalise on the current interest in acoustic based music following the chart storming performances of The Mumfords. They’ve got banjos for a start and their vocal harmonies recall the West Coast country rock of the seventies as parlayed by the likes of Poco and even CS&N. They’ve got a new album in the works, Beautiful Hell, which won’t be officially released until the new year but they promise that they’ll have advance copies on the night. So why not go down for what promises to be a whale of a time.

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Nice’N’Sleazy listing

The Breathing Room

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The Breathing Room is essentially one man and a guitar (and Garage Band). Based in Dundee Mike Fullarton has played in several bands in the area over the years but has recently decided to go solo. Without a recording deal he’s released several pieces for public consumption via the web. It may be somewhat lo-fi although at times there’s layers of sound that sound as if he has a string section behind him but more importantly he has a clutch of songs that show him to be a fine writer and singer. Beginning with the McCartney like Just a Taste which quietly builds up a head of steam Fullarton could comfortably slot in with the likes of Vetiver. Stranger On The Road is another fine song and has a fuller sound with multitracked voices. It ripples along very nicely and when the string sounds come in grows a little in majesty. Fullarton almost drifts into Bon Iver territory with the metronomed tick tock of And Then At Last while Twisted Metal almost collapses under its own fragility, a song that could blow away in the wind but which showcases his writing and ability with a simple melody. Final song The Killing Time again recalls Bon Iver and is given a wonderful delivery with a bit of oomph in the percussion although its delicacy remains to the fore.
As we said The Breathing Room are unsigned but you can download these songs and others here.

Hi Tech Corner

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Blabber’n’Smoke is relatively dinosaur like when it comes to listening to music. There has to be a disc, a piece of plastic that has to be inserted or placed on a machine that will convert its contents into music. That machine has to be made for playing music, a CD player or turntable (and then there’s lots of old cassettes lying around here also). We rarely listen to music on via computer and reviews that are sent as downloads are burned to disc prior to full listening. As musical primitives we’ve never gotten around to SACD and DVD-Audio so we were intrigued then when offered a Blu-ray album that promises a better sound quality than ever before. Problem is the need to hook up some speakers to a bblu-ray player or get one of those super duper woofer cinema sound things. However if the disc arives and we can play it we’ll report back. In the meantime here’s some info on these discs which come from Universal music.

High Fidelity Pure Audio is the exciting new range of physical HD audio products from Universal Music Group which uses Blu-ray technology to deliver the ultimate listening experience to the user. High Fidelity Pure Audio discs are playable through all Blu-ray devices including Blu-ray Players and games consoles, allowing the consumer to experience the sound as it was intended by the artist. No compression, no compromise. A download voucher is also included in-pack which gives the consumer a digital download of the album in MP3 format at a standard resolution ensuring they can also access their music on the move, on devices which don’t support HD audio.
Because of the increased size and bandwidth available on a Blu-ray Disc, music can be offered in its purest quality without the compression that is required for 16bit CD releases and lower resolution digital formats. Consumers have a choice of several different sound formats including PCM, Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio at 2.0 and 5.1 surround sound (where available).
Universal Music Group is committed to offering high quality audio to the discerning consumer and has selected a wide range of repertoire showcasing some of the most iconic talent the music world has ever seen. Artists with releases already on the format include Amy Winehouse, Bob Marley, Nirvana, Queen, The Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder. There is also a vast selection of classical and jazz music including Jonas Kaufmann, Rolando Villazón, John Coltrane and Oscar Peterson.

The Lucky Strikes. The Exile and The Sea. (Harbour Song)

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Essex band The Lucky Strikes are a persistent bunch stubbornly maintaining a liking for albums based around a theme (or as we used to call them, concept albums). Their two previous releases, The Chronicles of Solomon Quick and Gabriel, Forgive My 22 Sins (reviewed here) were set in America but for this, their fourth release, they delve into the backwaters and history of their homeland, the Thames Estuary, Southend and Canvey Island. Now for me these names have for years conjured up nothing more than Eddie and the Hot Rods, The Kursaal Flyers and Dr. Feelgood with images provided by Julian Temple’s Oil City Confidential which led me to believe that the area was for the most part a dilapidated industrial wasteland, indeed Essex was once called ‘the dustbin of London’ by Tory James Wentworth Day. However the recent release of The Lucky Strikes’ front man, Mathew Boulter’s solo disc, The Water and The Wave led me to look more closely at the area and the discovery of a fine blog, Caught By The River offered a different picture of an area steeped in natural history and a wild beauty. With The Thames spilling into the North Sea there’s a deep maritime history and it’s this along with the more recent rock’n’roll connections that The Lucky strikes attempt to capture on The Exile and The Sea.

Boulter’s album is a restrained affair that flowed like a stream, for the most part smooth and unruffled. The Exile and The Sea is a more rambunctious beast reflecting the turbulent events recounted within which include a vivid description of Southend pier on fire in 2005 on The Beast Burnt Down and the 19th Century tale of a man press ganged into the navy on Goldspring. Goldspring has a traditional feel to it especially in the vocals with the band joining in on a lusty chorus however it’s cloaked in a muscular organ draped beat which could have been delivered by the E Street Band. A rasping fiddle flits in sounding for all the world as if Dave Swarbrick was present and The Lucky Strikes sound as if they’ve picked up where classic Fairport Convention left off around 1973. This is perhaps the reason why The Exile and The Sea succeeds where Gabriel, Forgive My 22 Sins partially failed as the band are more comfortable with their Anglo centric heritage despite their love for and aptitude in delivering a more American sound. The Devil Knows Yourself develops this further moving more into folk rock mode with jangling mandolin and accordion joining in while the opening song, To Be King marries the folk and rock styles to become almost anthemic and will surely beg comparisons with Mike Scott’s Waterboys as will the dynamic New Avalon.
The title song and Vincent are more restrained with Boulter’s fragile voice buttressed by shimmering guitars and percussion somewhat like the sun reflected off of the sea surface with the latter picking up pace as it progresses with some fine guitar work from Boulter. Top of the class however is Ghost and the Actress which has a woozy waltz time rhythm and builds to a tremendous climax as it tells of the ghosts that inhabit the now closed Grand Hotel in Southend, a venue that hosted the infamous Essex bands mentioned previously.

The Exile and The Sea is a fine amalgamation of Anglo centric folk traditions with blustering American roots rock in the manner of Springsteen and The Band and with some luck the likes of New Avalon should be spreading across the airwaves in the very near future.

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The Thanes. She’s Coming Back To Me / Love Is Fading Away. State Records 7″ vinyl

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Always crackling away in the background us Scots seem to have an abiding love affair for grungy sixties/seventies sounding garage rock. So we thought it appropriate to alert folk to a forthcoming single (remember them) release from Edinburgh’s The Thanes. With a decidedly retro sound but a bang up to date kick the two songs leap from the speakers with a feral force.
She’s Coming Back To Me is penned by The Thanes main man, Angus McPake and it’s an absolute corker. Fuzz guitar, Eastern scales, snarled vocals and a psychedelic mini freak out in the middle eight all add up to a song that would have you scouring Nuggets and Pebbles albums to find out who did the original if you heard it on the radio. Love Is Fading Away on the flip side is an old song by Glasgow’s very own psychedelic hipsters The Poets and it’s a delicious mesh of jangling guitars with a Gene Clark feel to it. Winsome and all too short it’s like a time tube to the 5th dimension where caped Byrds hover.
Have a listen to She’s Coming Back To Me below and if you tune into Sunny Govan’s Switchback tomorrow night you’ll hear me playing Love Is Fading Away.