Featuring bassist Simon Smyth, the founder of The Smyths tribute band and fronted by singer James Schofield, TV PINS are a 5-piece from London and the West Midlands, bringing a British edge to the sound of West coast Americana, filtering influences such as Supertramp and Crowded House through 70 Americana. Riding a chugging guitar rhythm, new single Daisy Saturday Night, a taster or their forthcoming album, Aircutter, is a catchy alt-pop ode to festival goers, old school ravers, and people who refuse to grow old and is quite likely named for guitarist Duncan O’Neill’s wife.
Now based in Bristol, folk instrumental duo THORPE & MORRISON self-release their third album, Grass & Granite, the title a reference to fiddle player Sean (Morrison) and guitarist Harry’s (Thorpe) countryside upbringings in Ayrshire and Suffolk and their former adopted home in Birmingham (the cover also shows a house carved into the standing stones in the Outer Hebrides from whence Sean’s grandfather came) and reflecting the pastoral and industrial aspects of their sound. Taking in traditional English, Scottish and Irish tunes as well as self-penned material, it’s a glowing testament to their musicianship and virtuosity drawing on themes that explore both longings for home and moving on to new experiences, the lively opener, Big Skies & Water Meadows (which incorporates Damien O’Kane’s Castle Rock Road), an invocation of the landscape where Harry was raised in a cottage beside a water meadow.
Original numbers also include his more ruminative fingerpicked Something New written for friends embarking on journeys into the unknown, the fiddle-led Coast To Coast inspired by the journey of two friends across America, the one proposing to the other on reaching their destination, while a jazzy pizzicato fingerpicked and dancing fiddle Merlin the Wolfhound relates to an overly amorous, Guinness-drinking Irish wolfhound and , continuing the playfulness, the rhythmically choppy Claudette’s Last Dance is a fond farewell to the duo’s faithful Peugeot.
On the trad front, there’s the self-descriptive Wedding Marches, a pairing of two Danish tunes, the fiddle pulsing Causeway Joy, inspired by the Outer Hebrides and combining The Oysters Wives Rant and Ales Engelska by Danish cittern player Ale Carr, with Scottish slow air lament Put The Gown Upon The Bishop closing up shop. There’s three vocal tracks, two traditional, The Girl I Left Behind Me (incorporating two fiddle reels), Sovay, sung by Michelle Holloway from Bonfire Radicals, and rounded off with Sean’s Gizmo’s Tunes, and a slow waltzing cover of The Pogues’ Rainy Night In Soho with plucked and bowed fiddle. They’ve been gradually building a hefty reputation on the folk circuit over the past five years, this firmly cements them in the major leagues.
Fronted by the recently joined Tilly Clarke on vocals, TILLY & THE DROLLS are a Moseley-based quintet whose music encompasses rock, jazz, blues and folk (their covers range from Wade In The Water to I Run, Seven Nation Army and Valerie), the latter being the case for the marching beat, vocally soaring anthemic new single The View From My Window (Second Glances) featuring some fine, muscular guitar work from Steve Ashby.
