Follow Them True
Author: Matt Milton
View album and artist detailsAlbum and Artist Details
Artist/band: |
Stick in the Wheel |
Label: |
From Here Records |
Magazine Review Date: |
March/2018 |
Anyone who has seen Stick in the Wheel live recently will know just what a diamond-hard machine they have become. On this, their second album, guitarist and producer Ian Carter ensures that the East London folk band's in-your-face live sound is still there, but he gradually introduces elements from his other musical lives into the mix (he has long been a dubstep and drum'n'bass producer under the moniker EAN).
There's a gravelly distortion over everything, giving the album a grainy indie-rock feel. The opener, ‘Over Again’, is trademark Stick in the Wheel – spindly guitar, acerbic vocals from Nicola Kearey and Fran Foote and tub-thumping percussion from Fran's partner Si. But ‘Witch Bottle’, with its ominous squeezebox and chiming guitar, has more in common with 80s indie drone-rockers Spacemen 3 than with any of the band's UK folk peers. There's an epic, glowering quality to ‘100,000 Years’ while the astonishing ‘Follow Them True’ even manages to redeem AutoTune as a vocal effect, smearing it on Kearey's singing to make a beautifully sour melody even more melancholy. If it recalls anything else, it's perhaps the bittersweet English electronica of the late-lamented Broadcast. Still, there's plenty here that won't scare off the more purist of folkies: ‘Poor Old Horse’ offers us a cosy chair at the English folk hearth, with some big-harmony unaccompanied singing; while ‘Weaving Song’ will give a warm glow to anyone who ever loved Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner's songs from Bagpuss.
There's a gravelly distortion over everything, giving the album a grainy indie-rock feel. The opener, ‘Over Again’, is trademark Stick in the Wheel – spindly guitar, acerbic vocals from Nicola Kearey and Fran Foote and tub-thumping percussion from Fran's partner Si. But ‘Witch Bottle’, with its ominous squeezebox and chiming guitar, has more in common with 80s indie drone-rockers Spacemen 3 than with any of the band's UK folk peers. There's an epic, glowering quality to ‘100,000 Years’ while the astonishing ‘Follow Them True’ even manages to redeem AutoTune as a vocal effect, smearing it on Kearey's singing to make a beautifully sour melody even more melancholy. If it recalls anything else, it's perhaps the bittersweet English electronica of the late-lamented Broadcast. Still, there's plenty here that won't scare off the more purist of folkies: ‘Poor Old Horse’ offers us a cosy chair at the English folk hearth, with some big-harmony unaccompanied singing; while ‘Weaving Song’ will give a warm glow to anyone who ever loved Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner's songs from Bagpuss.
