A world of arson, moonshine, loves lost and others found, fishing boats, liver failure, troubled families and dark nights spent in the embrace of a single malt. Gigs alongside equally humble pantheists, British Sea Power, the skulduggerous Brakes and the woozy Walkmen culminates in an album that sits somewhere between the wicked, confessional narratives of Nick Cave and the bookish, folkish quietude of fellow miserablist, James Yorkston. Imagine an offshore party of fishermen and artists drowning in a barrel of their own beautiful misgivings as a handful of Cornish smugglers sink the boat on which they sailed with little more than an accordion and a couple of penny whistles.
Formed and based in Devon by accordion, harmonium, ukulele, banjo, cornet, piano, guitar and whistle playing oarsman, Johny Lamb with midshipman Steve Garinger and the able bodied seamen, Matt Eaton and Sally Megee joining him with sticks and singing at the helm, tunes like ‘Uyeasound’ and ‘The Sorrowful Cry Of The Final Kidney’ ache like the lost mournful tears of the crew of the Mary Celeste as they sunk into the ether, plied as they are with slow and pitiful sails and winds that promise to tear the soul of any mortal man. It’s heavy stuff, but the sheer weightless beauty of the melodies and the frail, weepish delivery of Lamb’s unostentatious vocal on tracks like ‘Her Love Song (The Devils Care)’ forms the basis of a record that warms the very cockles and muscles of your heart and avoids the usual pitfalls and poguery of Shane McGowan imitators, the only thing that tossing here, being thankfully the ship.
Cruising gently at its own near torpid pace and relieved only by the swaggering headspin of a sea shanty or two, it’s an intensely personal record, occupying its own trans-century time-period and impressively at odds with the rest of the record buying world yet all the more timeless because of it.
‘Beer is for the daytime and the whiskey’s for your bed.’
So wonderully, wonderfully homesick. And true.