An earlier review on this site declared the Watford crew to be a “folk/postpunk/indie acoustic trio with a lot of class”, and the latest album sees no reason to disagree, although there’s actually only six new numbers, the others being two previous singles and, loaded at the end, four remixes of older tracks. It opens up with ‘Living the Dream’, a folk rock number about the tribulations of being a struggling artist (“Jeremiah is a writer/He’s even been in The Times/He wrote a piece on a fighter/And several books about crime/And he’s a hospital porter/Where he works through the night/If the hours were a bit shorter/He’d be doing alright”) or musician (“you take to the stage/And you play all the bars/But for all of your plans/You never make it that far”). But staying with your dream is what matters, “Cos you never let go/It never tears you apart/You keep on keeping the faith/And keep it close to your heart”.
A mix of folk and country blues, ‘View From A Bridge’ is a tragic different side of the tracks storysong (“I swore to her mother, I’d never look at another… but/There was a rift from the start/I suppose it was maybe, two jobs and a baby/Either way we just drifted apart”) that ends with a murder suicide. Not any more cheery, opening with a repeated drum pattern, ‘Hope Lies Bleeding’ is an observation on the war in Ukraine (“Hope lies grieving as the tanks roll past/Hope lies grieving at the Molotov blast/Hope cries, missiles flying overhead/Hope lies bleeding from the thousands dead”) and Russian oligarchs (“Football clubs and caviar and vodka on the rocks/A cocktail made with egos and giant superyachts/Homes in Chelsea, Tuscany, the Riviera and in Spain/They take from their own people, their losses are their gains/Bleeding dry their homeland moving wealth offshore/Clinging on to power to justify a war”).
A resonator guitar ballad, ‘Bet on You’ uses gambling imagery for a last flutter love song (“I know this deck is stacked/But you’re my only game in town/Well, I could bank a pair, or I could risk a straight/Should I stop right there? Or leave it up to fate?/But if the truth be told, and in all regards/I know that I should fold, cos’ you’re holding all the cards…I know that you play rough, and if I call your bluff/ Then you’ll break it apart”). Romantic disappointment continues with the bouzouki-based bluesy ‘A Year To Say Goodbye In’ (“It was an age, a time to die in/ It was a moment, here and then gone/ Like shifting sands, we all must move on”) that may well have another suicide resolution (“The waters are deep, I’m longing for sleep”).
Relationship conflicts get a more playful treatment with ‘Party Of Two’, a vaguely folk calypso about disagreeing over who you’d have as dinner guests (“I said maybe Dylan, and then Morecambe and Wise/She wanted Nelson Mandela, cos he’d won some sort of prize… I said I’d have Hemmingway, because he liked a drink/She said she’d have Chekhov, because he’d make her think/I fancied some music, so I chose Patsy Cline/And then I picked Jesus, in case we ran out of wine”). Of course, as the title suggests, at the end of the day all you need is each other (“she stood on the doorstep, and this was all I could say/I was thinking the guest-list, could be cut down to two/Because the one that I want there, well that person is you/So we opened a bottle, and we poured out some wine/And she drank to her friends, and I drank to mine”).
Elsewhere, ‘2020 Vision’ takes a political look back at the pandemic, Brexit, Scottish independence and insurrection in America while the mandolin-flecked ‘Church On The Hill’ was inspired by how the medieval village church of St. Mary’s in Edlesborough, Buckinghamshire, was the image that sustained a young soldier during WWI. Rounding off with remixes of the refugee-themed ‘The Migrant’s Lament’ with Holly Brandon on fiddle, the punning titled ‘Village Fate’, another failed in ‘Here And Now’ and, finally, ‘Throw Of The Dice’, their signature folk rock tune about a small-time band still hoping to make it big, it’s unlikely to fulfil such aspirations, but it should comfortably keep them on the folk club and festival circuit for a while yet.
