Logo
DiS Needs You: Save our site »
  • "I’m not afraid to be vulnerable": DiS Meets Half Waif about 5 hours ago
  • Drinks - Hippo Lite 1 day ago
  • Alexis Taylor - Beautiful Thing 1 day ago
  • "I feel like an awesome guitar hero": DiS Meets Hinds 1 day ago
  • "We never stopped doing things": DiS Meets The Longcut 2 days ago
  • Jenny Wilson - Exorcism 3 days ago
  • Mouse on Mars - Dimensional People 3 days ago
  • DiScover Diron Animal 3 days ago
  • Logo_home2
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • In Photos
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Community
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • Blog
  • Community

The Singing Loins

Stuff

Label: Damaged Goods Release Date: 07/02/2011

66413
ro8man by Rob Harris February 4th, 2011

The Medway Towns: this little conurbation in north Kent is home to such musical luminaries as Billy Childish, Holly Golightly, Lupen Crook, Kid Harpoon and, erm, Rick Waller. Known mostly for its primal blues-influenced garage rock bands, its musicians like to call it the Medway Delta, presumably to align it to the blues lineage of Mississippi. If this sounds far fetched, it’s worth noting that, in certain underground clubs in the USA, Medway Garage nights are a popular fixture – club nights devoted exclusively to the music of bands like Childish’s Thee Headcoats and The Milkshakes, and the Eighties mod revival band The Prisoners.

But if there’s anything that binds the Medway bands together, it’s a vocalised sense of anger and frustration married to a DIY ethic and a wilful anti-commercialism. It’s sometimes difficult, however, to discern whether this is a direct product of it’s environment and history, or if it’s just a product of the cult of Billy Childish looming large.

Always a divisive figure, Billy Childish is a self-styled renaissance man and has recorded in excess of 100 albums, mainly consisting of his trademark brand of brutal three-chord garage punk. Famous for his relationship in the Eighties with Tracey Emin, the eccentrically moustachioed Childish has been cited as an influence by artists as seminal as Kurt Cobain and Jack White, and lauded by the late John Peel, yet has always remained an obscure cult figure, revelling in his outsiderdom.

In the early Nineties, Childish met Chris Broderick and Chris Allen, who started the Singing Loins as a raw, stripped-down acoustic punk-folk duo, pitching themselves somewhere between The Pogues and The Levellers. Oh so fittingly, he recorded their first two albums in his bathroom (for the acoustics, naturally). Fast forward half a dozen albums or so, the Loins, now completed by Rob Shepherd, bring us Stuff, which they describe as 'bare-knuckled folk', and Childish’s influence is all over it, in its sense of place, its self deprecating honesty and its home-cooked roughness.

It all starts off promisingly enough with opener ‘Slab O’ Slate’, a mournful, gypsy-folk shanty, with its plaintive tale of “The unloved kid” backed by banjo and harmonica. Second song ‘Where’s My Machine Gun?’ is a bonkers Russian Cossack stomp, with junk-shop percussion, queasy organs and Broderick shouting “Love thy neighbour, do us a favour, drop down dead you graceless peace of shite!”. It sounds like Shane MacGowan fronting The Doors. ‘Dying for Your Love’ carries on the spirited, rough-around-the-edges folkiness, but with a kind of flamenco flavour. So far, so charmingly home made and authentic – it brings to mind Gogol Bordello in its pilfering of different European folk traditions. And then, on ‘Friendship, for Once’, Broderick decides to have a midlife crisis.

In the hands of a more talented lyricist, the tale of a middle aged man being hit with the realisation that a meaningful relationship is more fulfilling than endless one-night stands might just about float. Maybe. But glib lines like “I’m a typical man, took a lifetime to learn, that sex without love’s less than nothing sometimes”, backed by a sorry accordian is thoroughly unconvincing. And anyway, if it’s mawkish folk you’re after, Mumford and Sons have kind of cornered that market.

Broderick, like Childish, is the owner of a voice best suited to impassioned yelping. But unlike Childish, he doesn’t seem to have a keen grasp of his own limitations, of which one is clearly heart-on-sleeve balladeering. Another low point is ‘Ascending Chatham Hill’, with its name checking of Cash Converters and its terrace-like chant of “Gillingham! Gillingham!”. This is folk-punk, sure – if your favourite punk band is Sham 69.

In their press release, the Singing Loins say 'genius is nothing more than gritted teeth and enduring patience'. If only. Their claim to being 'the world’s longest serving, truly amateur, original musical group' echoes their mentor Billy Childish’s claim to amateurism, in the sense of producing art for the love of doing it, rather than for financial gain. But, as a man who recently had a retrospective of his painting curated by the ICA and who has performed on stage with Jack White, Childish can afford to be self-deprecatingly modest. By contrast the Loins seem amateur in the sense that their music is better suited to being played in back street pubs than actual releases. If they are genuinely just doing this for the love of it, then who is anyone to disparage them? Best not give up the day jobs then.

  • 5
    Rob Harris's Score
Log-in to rate this record out of 10
Share on
   
Love DiS? Become a Patron of the site here »


LATEST


  • "I’m not afraid to be vulnerable": DiS Meets Half Waif


  • Drinks

    Hippo Lite


  • Alexis Taylor

    Beautiful Thing


  • "I feel like an awesome guitar hero": DiS Meets Hinds


  • "We never stopped doing things": DiS Meets The Longcut


  • Jenny Wilson

    Exorcism



Left-arrow

Cut Copy

Zonoscope

Mobback
66412
66414

Holton's Opulent Oog

Love in the Mist

Mobforward
Right-arrow


LATEST

    Interview


    "I’m not afraid to be vulnerable": DiS Meets Ha...

  • 105547
  • review


    Drinks - Hippo Lite

  • 105546

    review


    Alexis Taylor - Beautiful Thing

  • 105545
  • Interview


    "I feel like an awesome guitar hero": DiS Meets...

  • 105544

    Interview


    "We never stopped doing things": DiS Meets The ...

  • 105537
  • review


    Jenny Wilson - Exorcism

  • 105542

    review


    Mouse on Mars - Dimensional People

  • 105541
  • Interview


    DiScover Diron Animal

  • 105539
MORE


    feature


    A Month in Records: August 2008

  • 33467
  • review


    Coldplay - Ghost Stories

  • 95631

    review


    Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

  • 7335
  • feature


    Cursive - Six Recorded Highlights

  • 45147

    review


    Sonic Youth - Nurse

  • 6044
  • review


    Kate Nash - Made Of Bricks

  • 26283

    DiScover


    DiScover: Friendly Fires

  • 93726
  • news


    DiS curates the #IndependentMusicMonday Playlist

  • 101788
MORE

Drowned in Sound
  • DROWNED IN SOUND
  • HOME
  • SITE MAP
  • NEWS
  • IN DEPTH
  • IN PHOTOS
  • RECORDS
  • RECOMMENDED RECORDS
  • ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
  • FESTIVAL COVERAGE
  • COMMUNITY
  • MUSIC FORUM
  • SOCIAL BOARD
  • REPORT ERRORS
  • CONTACT US
  • JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
  • FOLLOW DiS
  • GOOGLE+
  • FACEBOOK
  • TWITTER
  • SHUFFLER
  • TUMBLR
  • YOUTUBE
  • RSS FEED
  • RSS EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
  • MISC
  • TERM OF USE
  • PRIVACY
  • ADVERTISING
  • OUR WIKIPEDIA
© 2000-2018 DROWNED IN SOUND