Formed from the ashes of John Peel-endorsed indie-band Accrington Stanley.
Based in Southampton, and formed from the ashes of John Peel-endorsed indie-bandAccrington Stanley, the band bring layers of warmth and subtlety to the uncompromisingly lyrical alt-folk songs of Dan O'Farrell, English-teacher by day and angry, leftist complainer by night.
The songs take a zig-zagging tour of the narrator's struggles with life, 'maturity' and the joys of middle-age. Opener Heartbreak Hostel was 'written for Elvis Presley, but he never got back to us'. In The Colonial Club the personal angst becomes political - a gammon- baiting response to the pearl- clutching horror of the right to the sight of statues of slave-owners being chucked in the sea. Racing through the Dexy's-inspired passionate danger of 'Cyanide Desire' , - why do the things we love always have to kill us? - we land on the spiritual treatise of God Etc. 'I let Jesus take the wheel...he drove me off a cliff'. Like all lapsed cradle-Catholics, O'Farrell experiences the push-pull of his religious upbringing, searching for meaning as he tries to become as 'nakedly human' as possible. Side one ends with the double-whammy of Sunny Weather and Alarm, the first a Groucho Marx-quoting jazz-breeze where the narrator struggles to just chill in the sun - for gods sake!- and the second a pretty, shimmering exploration of how hard it is to communicate with the ones we love.
The album's second half starts with another dose of dark humour: Hang Me On The Wall takes masochistic joy in imagining a series of life- ending scenarios, with co-vocalist Rick Foot getting all the best lines. The album's two 'cornerstone' tracks are positioned carefully on side two. Track 2 ( or 7 on the CD), Loss tries to deal with the grief that hits us all - the howl of pain that emerges at the end of the song probably saying as much as all the preceding lyrics. Track 4 (10), Goodbye, returns to the theme of loneliness and miscommunication - the universal ache - yet the music soars. Sandwiched between these two party-anthems (!) comes the album's poppiest track, Asbestos Love , a slightly demented paean to global- warming. The album's closing tracks - The Fish That Learned To Drown and Ursa Minor - complete the arc, and -finally - offer some hope of struggle and growth, and then redemption and self-acceptance.
