Watching the Singing Loins play live gives you the overwhelming impression that it must be enormous fun being a Singing Loin. The knockabout onstage banter, the raucous full tilt attack of their more beery sing-along numbers and the inevitable self deprecation as Broderick, Allen and Shepherd tear through a selection of their frankly astonishing back catalogue.
All this belies the fact that the Singing Loins have developed into remarkable and sophisticated tunesmiths with lyrics steeped in pathos and intelligence, yet still capable of enormous wit and humour. Stuff is their fourth album to be released on punk and lo-fi label Damaged Goods (discounting the Complete and Utter Singing Loins round-up of their earlier work) and each of these albums has offered up something new.
The last offering, 2009’s Unravelling England featured fabulous songs, from the wistful melancholy of ‘Old Ferry Lane’ (a personal favourite) to the vaudevillian ‘Please Take My Scissors Away’. Sonically Unravelling… felt close to being a more mature folk recording compared to some of the earlier, punkier sounds of say ‘Hauling In The Slack’. Not necessarily a bad thing, after all none of us are getting younger.
Where’s my machine gun?
But five seconds into the frenzied Stylophone-driven vitriolic rage of ‘Where’s My Machine Gun?’ (previewed in the form of the whirling-dervish promo video posted onto Youtube just before Christmas) it became obvious that as far as the new ‘Loins album went all bets were off. Maturity be dammed, this was as exhilarating as any spotty teen punk sensation, but without the accompanying acne. Rolf Harris it certainly was not.
The album begins in a more haunting fashion, with the evocative ‘Slab O’ Slate’, a sad tale of unmarked child graves reminiscent of ‘Suffer Little Children’ by the Smiths with more banjo, textured percussion and oblique references to ‘Strange Fruit’ by Billie Holiday.
Following ‘Where’s My Machine Gun?’ is ‘Nail It Back Together’, one of the few songs on this album to be thoroughly road tested live. But the recording, with its layered guitars, swampy Hammond and doom laden bass feels more ominous than these live outings prepare you for, pulling your heartstrings with every line. For me, this is probably the best song they have ever released. And this is really saying something.
‘Dying For Your Love’ follows energetically on the heels of this, all hand claps and flamenco guitar rhythms, sadness in guise of stomping pop. ‘Friendship For Once’, Brodericks attempt to reconcile himself to his inability to form purely platonic friendships with the opposite sex, reintroduces the accordion to the sound palate and a strange wistful happiness, for once.
Tears and laughter
‘Running Away From Home’ follows however and has inadvertently caused me to start crying on more than one listen. Fortunately to wryly amusing ‘Another Folk Song About Death’ follows, with the character of death personified in the manner of a Tim Burton movie, with angular clattering percussion and sympathetic double bass playing laying beneath angular, perpetually descending accordion, mandolin and guitar parts.
‘All Her Life’, a historical tale, ballad even, to falsely imprisoned womanhood is augmented by the loneliest sounding piano and a heartfelt vocal completely at odds with the sneer of ‘…Machine Gun’ and shows the breadth of the performances offered up on this album. Sputnik even makes an appearance, albeit in sound effect form.
But the Singing Loins wouldn’t be the Singing Loins without at least one song very much in and of the towns they live in and ‘Ascending Chatham Hill’ ticks that box. I’m never personally sure if songs like this are too parochial, but when they are this funny I wonder why I care. And it is true, it is a long way from the Luton arches to the hose clip factory. And if Gillingham FC don’t adopt it as their official anthem, they are missing a trick.
‘The Dog Shit Gang’ is possibly even funnier and certainly wittier. Both a vocal nod to ‘Anarchy In The UK’ and an ode to small ambition and council workers everywhere. ‘Any Good Englishman’ ticks the box of that other great Loins theme, the melancholy drinking anthem and I can’t think they will better it. It becomes a state of the nation address and segues into the epic sounding album closer ‘Even As It Rains Down Hard’, filling you with a desire to start the album again.
Only a couple of these songs have managed to make it into the live set and with such an impressive bunch of tunes to call on I can understand why you would want to play to the crowds love of the songs they know. The band themselves have been quite cagey about these new recordings. I would be too. I’d want to keep them to myself as long as I could. But the secrets out now: for all their self-deprecation the Singing Loins have made their best album.
Stuff is available on CD and digital download via Damaged Good Records
Photograph (c) Phil Dillon
