There are many fine lines in this life. Between dangerously funny and offensive, between The Stereophonics and inhumane Geneva Convention contravening torment, and between shambling peculiarity and curious genius. Scout Niblett falls quite certainly into the latter category, as anyone who’s experienced her live irregularity will surely attest. Shoddily played drums, rudimentary strummed guitar (only occasionally experienced simultaneously) and wavering, unrestrained, verging on hysterical vocals from a woman who sounds like she’s very much in-between places. It’s hardly pop music, though in some way it does endeavour to be.
There really is nothing to differentiate the likes of the ridiculous title track (“an emergency vehicle, I am”) or ‘Until Death’ from the small-change entertainment provided by the bag lady with a broken banjo in the doorway of Woolworths on a rainy Sunday evening. But in a way it’s the vulnerability and hopelessness of these recordings which makes them so perplexingly listenable. It’s like PJ Harvey’s first album, without the style, grace or surging necessity. It’s like Patti Smith without the wholemeal gustiness, but with something a lot more fragile and kind of endearing.
‘I’ll Be A Prince (Shhh)’ and ‘12 Miles’ amble along quite tightly, and more conventionally, with their drum/guitar/voice combo like a stripped bare Royal Trux. And the drum/vox opener ‘Miss In Love With Her Own Fate’ (which is surely what she is) is actually very pretty for all of its out of time beats and fluttering light vocals, the same applying to the guitar/vox ‘Fire Flies’. And even the brief tantrum drumming of ‘Texas’ makes you smile. To call it a grower would be wrong, though it does intermittently stick to you like gammy flypaper. For its intrigue alone it can get no fewer than three stars.