THE GREATEST BAND YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF....
UNRAVELLING ENGLAND
One of
Nude Magazine's
top-14 albums of 2009.
ROCK 'n' REEL - Reviewed by
Diane Mason
www.rock-n-reel.co.uk
**** (4 stars)
Unruly, unrefined and unbridled, maestros of misrule The Singing Loins are back
with a blinding set destined to shake the vitals of listeners from the Medway
Delta to Manchester and beyond. Unravelling England opens with the sleazy brio
of Dirty Dora's, giving way to the insistently sinister Please Take My Scissors
away.
Freaks, geeks and the socially dysfunctional people the lyrics of this thing of
many moods. The Fat Boy Of Peckham is a raw and wry commentary on youthful
obesity, with energetic and edgy accordion, while Cunny Ann is trad folk with
bare-knuckle attitude, picking up the pace with mighty mandolin and cranked up
fiddle, infectious enough to have this reviewer pogoing round the front parlour,
punching the air.
The slower songs pack a genuine emotional wallop, too, with Everywhere being
that rare pleasure, a love song with depth and sincerity. Forget niceties,
Unravelling England is a storming album and, once again, the Loins deliver a
sharp knee to the nuts of all purveyors of the polite and half hearted.
Reviewed by Iain Aitch
(July 2009)
Iain Aitch is author of We’re British Innit, published by Collins (www.britishinnit.com)
http://www.folkingcool.co.uk/2009/07/05/79/
Sitting somewhere between the kind of urban folk-punk that abounded in the wake
of the Pogues and the Medway bedroom blues of Billy Childish, this accomplished
12-tracker paints a portrait of an England filled with love, loss and circus
freaks.
On tracks like Cunny Ann they come on like early, full steam ahead The Men They
Couldn’t Hang, though the Loins, who have been around since 1990, are no mere
copyists. So Sophisticated drags up Kentish/London/Irish roots with some aplomb,
though the standout track is Please Take My Scissors Away, which offers a punky
collision between Brel and the Tiger Lillies that sees everyone crashing off the
end of the pier and into the drink. Lyrically and vocally the Singing Loins
offer up something that offers glimpses of Ian Dury and Robb Johnson, though the
snarl of sometimes collaborator Childish is in there as well.
Dirty Doras seems to draw on the more emotive end of Chas and Dave’s back
catalogue, with Old Ferry Lane expounding on the kind of grimy, canal-based
romance found in Dirty Old Town. Unravelling England is certainly a place to
find wonderful portraits of outcasts, oddballs and (not so) lovable rogues, as
Psycho Hippie and The Fat Boy of Peckham show, the latter being perhaps the
first musical tribute to south London’s one-man early 20th century obesity
crisis. Since You Were My Girl shows the Singing Loins do gentle ballads as well
as they execute dialect-laden thrashes, which means that you will soon have this
catchy album on repeat so you can shout or sob along as the mood takes you.
Mark Deming for CD Universe (2009)
http://www.cduniverse.com
The third album from the Singing Loins since they returned
to active duty in 2005, Unravelling England is that rare recording that really
deserves to be called folk-punk. Chris Broderick's vocals can conjure up the
same sort of joyously bitter
snarl that would have earned him a gig at the Vortex back in
1977, but he also has a genuine respect for the traditions of British acoustic
music, and his style manages to keep a foot in each plot at once. It helps that
he's also a top-shelf songwriter with plenty of different colors at his disposal
-- he's just as comfortable with the rude good humor of "Cunny Ann" and "Dirty
Dora's" and the two-fingers attitude of "Psycho Hippie" and "The Fat Boy of
Peckham" as the eloquent heartache of "Since You Were My Girl" and "My Town."
Broderick gets excellent support from bandmates Chris Allen on guitars and Rob
Shepherd on accordion and banjo, as they fill up the arrangements with admirable
efficiency and taste, and inviting guest fiddler Cari Sayers for the sessions
was a fine idea.
For an album made using a whopping three microphones and recorded
in the spare room of the engineer Glenn Barnes' home, the audio is quite
impressive, clean and full of presence, and the performances are rich with life
and muscle without sounding anything less than natural. And "Everywhere" is as
smart, impassioned, and moving a song about love as you're likely to hear this
year. Listening to Unravelling England is a bit like stepping into the back room
of a pub to hear a brilliant band quietly sawing away, unconcerned with anyone
hearing them or not, but in this case you can move back to the first track and
confirm that your suspicions were correct -- the Singing Loins are just as good
as you imagined, and they've made an unpretentiously outstanding album with
Unravelling England. ~ Mark Deming
Ralph McLean show on BBC Radio Ulster (August
2009)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/radioulster/ralphmclean/
After playing a couple of songs...."Lyrically
sophisticated and musically pure.....I'll be buying their entire back
catalogue".
Reviewed by Hugh Gulland (September 2009)
For Vive Le Punk
www.vivelepunk.net
Touching folk-punk slices of English
life.
5/5
Lifting the lid on the bubbling undercurrents of life in London and its home
counties environs, Singing Loins operate a curious kind of semi acoustic
post-punk cabaret. Unravelling England offers a highly idiosyncratic insight on
Englishness, one that nimbly sidesteps the pitfalls of parochialism, much in the
spirit of kindred rockin’ cockneys Ian Dury or Steve Marriott. The raw-edged
urban-folk reels of ‘Dirty Dora’ or ‘The Fat Boy Of Peckham’ reverberate with
warmth and wit, and the heart-sick laments of ‘Since You Were My Girl’ or
‘Everywhere’ are as human and touching as anything I’ve come by in a good long
while. This is rag ’n’ bone folk ‘n’ roll with poetry and soul.
ROCK 'n' REEL
www.rock-n-reel.co.uk
THE DROWNED MAN RESUSCITATOR
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Rock'n'Reel Live Review |
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Reviewed by Lois Wilson -
MOJO (Jan 08)
**** (4 stars)
Masterminded in 1990 by Chris
Broderick (Vocalist, poet, screenwriter, novella writer), guitarist Arfur Allen
and banjo, mandolin and accordion player Rob Shepherd, the Loins aim was to make
'Authentic raw folk from the Medway delta'. Early LP's were recorded in
Billy Childish's toilet (for the acoustics), with Bruce Brand and Holly
Golightly chiming in. By 1996's 'Clever Clogs & Big Head' they'd
parted, only to come together again in 2004 to try again. Thank heavens
they did! The Drowned Man Resuscitator, the follow up to 2005's
Songs To Hear Before You Die, is the Loins at their very best, combining
raucous traditional song (Be Merry!) with heartbreaking outpourings of emotion
(My Brother) and salutes to ladies of the night (God Bless The Whores Of
Rochester). It's good to have them back!
Reviewed by Everett True
- Plan B (August 07)
www.planbmag.com
The Drowned Man Resuscitator is the sort of rabble
rousing banjo and mandolin led populist music that the Levellers gave such a bad
name to… and yet this 'cut the crap', bawdy, modern day English working class
folk band manages the trick of being affecting without lapsing into
sentimentalism. Imagine… I dunno
The Pogues produced by Liam Watson at Toe Rag, raw-assed folk stripped right
back till only the bare bones of emotion and rock remain. Man, this is great.
Sometimes it's out and out boisterous ('God Bless The
Whores Of Rochester', 'Be Merry'), sometimes it's out and out romantic (the
unashamedly open 'To A Beautiful Woman Growing Older', which reduced me to tears
on the first listen), always brimful with sincerity.
There's a certain edge, fierceness in Chris Broderick's voice that makes
you believe in him; a belief in the blacks and whites of life appeals to this
boy who seems to be mostly surrounded by grey… plus a corking pot-shot at
Christianity (Why, Lord?), that blares out like a beacon.
The Singing Loins can be as savage as Billy Childish at his
most belligerent and are equally as inspirational. This is a fine record indeed.
Reviewed by Sean McGhee
in Rock 'n' Reel (Sep 07)
www.rock-n-reel.co.uk
Now extended to a 3 piece, Rochester's very own Singing
Loins have developed a particularly effective 3 pronged attack that allows The
Drowned Man Resuscitator to reverberate with the kind of earthy, raw
melodies that have built their reputation.
This time around, though, they've skillfully grafted on a carefully
studied song craft and offer a more accessible immediacy that gets you hook,
line and sinker, from the word go.
Opening with their own cleverly tongue-in-cheek anthem 'We
Are The Singing Loins' and onwards via songs like the evocatively titled 'God
Bless The Whores Of Rochester', 'The Topless Twins Of Allhallows On Sea' and 'To
A Beautiful Woman Growing Older', they demonstrate a more strident and
celebratory confidence. Their
unique brand of urban folk, trademarked by a gritty and pithy sound, takes the
folk blueprint and creates a music that spans at least the last five decades but
still sounds strikingly contemporary - one of the finest examples being ' The
Hartlake Bridge Disaster', a trad-styled piece of suitably melancholic
atmosphere, whilst their classic sound of clucking banjo, driving guitar and
mandolin takes glorious centre stage on 'Be Merry!'
The Singing Loins stand as a sterling reminder of the
vigour and inspiration woefully absent elsewhere within the contemporary new
acoustic movement.
Reviewed by Everett True
in Village Voice (New York)
www.villagevoice.com
To A Beautiful Woman Growing Older
is this year's most beautiful and honest love song by an unashamedly
anti-capitalist, romantic old school English folk band.
SONGS TO HEAR
BEFORE YOU DIE
Reviewed by Brian Gillespie in Shite 'n' Onions. www.shitenonions.com
For a fellow
known to go randomly off on a tangent from time to time, the latest release from
The Singing Loins has left me totally speechless. It's absolutely
brilliant. It's raw, it's authentic, It's also one of the most complete
albums I've heard in recent years! Trust me, I've had this album for
several months now, and I honestly had to calm down before I could even attempt
to review it. Sure, you could mention this as a candidate for record of
the year, but personally I think it's so timeless it shouldn't matter what
bloody year it is. Their sound has that acoustic grit most bands would
kill for. Real folk music. True busking troubadours. The
Singing Loins play the type of folk music that leaves a ring in your
bathtub. Skiffle with soul, so to speak...
Simply put, a
true, flawless classic.
Reviewed by Sean McGhee in Punk Oi
UK.
www.punkoiuk.co.uk
"As proof
that you can't keep a good man down, or in this case two, after nearly a decade
Medway's finest return with a new album of acoustic/earthy originals. For
points of reference imagine a mutant fusion of Chas'n'Dave
jamming with the Pogues in a smoky back-street
boozer. This is the authentic sound of the underbelly of Kent, punk
attitude and a drunken swagger. This is folk music given back its balls,
bite and no little bile.
Given the
chance the Singing Loins could do for English folk what the Pogues
did for Irish music, snatch it back from the middle class historians and
musical purists as poignancy, pathos, drama and real life is present within
their songs in abundance. Match with that an ability of the duo to
produce some of the finest gritty yet warm and utterly infectious ballads that reveal an almost psychic understanding of each
other's approach.
There's a dark
beauty in the suspenseful "Low November Sun", a swagger and cockiness
to "Honest Man", a melodic attractiveness to the delightful
"Angel of the Medway", while they revisit with a vengeance previous
scenes of glory on "Skinners Rats", that once again bemoans the fate
of those working as an underclass for agencies. As ever it's delivered
with a bubbling air of anger but an upbeat defiance. Top this off with
another Singing Loins sing-along classic in the exuberance of "The Pub On The Corner", a rip-roaring anthem to the dirt and
grime of real drinking establishments, "The Chief Constable's missus flat
out on the floor/With her legs in the air and her head out the door..."
The musical equivalent of a pastie and a pint in a
smoky warm bar, where the beer is cold and the women are hot!
BIZARRE
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Bizzare had a
bit of fun with this old photo. It took us a while to notice.
They've shifted Brod's muscular body with the tuba onto Arf's little legs
& head, and Arf's skinny body with the dog onto Brod's perfectly
proportioned legs and superhero face. (I expect Arf will come back
with something here) |
LIVE REVIEW -
PORTLAND ARMS, CAMBRIDGE, April 06.
www.rhythmonline.co.uk
The band we were most keen to see were Medway's Singing Loins, in a rare live
appearance. This was just lovely enthralling stuff. With the
feel of a series of 1950's kitchen-sink dramas put to music, or the real
relevant/authentic sound of English folk (they have been compared before now to
an English Pogues). They were never less than totally riveting and
engaging from start to finish, with wit, humour and great story
telling.
THE COMPLETE
& UTTER SINGING LOINS -
Reviewed by Ben Donnelly in US
Mag, DUSTED.
www.dustedmagazine.com
...The duo formed in the early 90's with the specific intent of messing
around with English folk. And mess around they did, 49 times, all of which
are collected for this compilation.
The somber, medieval lilt of traditional balladry is tossed against the
kitchen sink imagery and anger of post-war Britain. Think of the grimy
films of Ken Loach or Phillip Larkin's hostile poetry.
...Their austere rawness exposes a warm heart. The Singing Loins are
like a hedgehog - small, smelly and covered with prickles, but very English and
charming in spite of it all.
“The Loins are fast
becoming one of my favourite acts... They radiate
originality and attack their instruments like their lives depended on it, and
are absolutely incapable of a lacklustre
performance... Beautifully rough acoustic music has rarely sounded this good...
They produce a sound that is the most intense and superbly vital
UK urban-acoustic-skiffle-punk-folk-country-blues-a-billy. Absolutely guaranteed lOO% proof experience. Do not miss!”
Sean McGhee - ROCK ‘N’
REEL
“The excellent Singing
Loins provide an exotic mix of the traditional and the ultra modern.”
TIME OUT
“A style and panache so
strong... Startling... Monumentally magnificent. An overtly original sound which draws out a
truly splendid yet gritty taste of
England... The lyrics are
poignant and take in some bright social commentary while retaining a real
sense of humour.”
Spike Sommer
- SPIRAL SCRATCH
“Sure beats the shit outta the Pogues.”
Everett True - MELODY MAKER
