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LUPEN CROOK & THE MURDERBIRDS - Live @ The Cellars, 25/01/09

I’ve seen Lupen Crook before, and I was mesmerised. There’s something of a wandering minstrel feel to Lupen and his Murderbirds, packed into their van and zipping from gig to gig to play their tunes. For those who haven’t had the pleasure before, and there were a few in the audience, it would be an interesting gig. Catching up with the band before the gig I was told they were going to be trying out a whole bath of new tunes, so it was a rare chance to see a work in progress.

To warm the audience up Tired Rabbit took to the stage, these south coast folksters played a rich mix of tunes that started the night on the right track before Kurt Cooder took to the stage to give us an idea of what Joe Strummer’s output may have sounded like if he’d been into folk!

Then The B Of The Bang took to the stage. One of the South Coast’s most exciting young acts, these guys have a knack for surprising their audiences. Lead singer Wit’s vocals sift hauntingly across a cornucopia of songs that veer from Radiohead -esque alt.Rock to haunting solo numbers and even a powerful duet with London based singer-songwriter Jessica Spencer.

After such high quality supports Lupen and band take to the stage. The songs are nearly all new, the names escape the audience (and this reviewer), but each track builds on the last and the haunting, slightly gothic (as in Bram Stoker, not Robert Smith) feel of the songs serves to transport the audience from a dark and windy night in 2009 to a timeless place, you can almost picture a log fire roaring and stout men swigging flagons of ale. Not that this is folk for people in chunky sweaters. Like other Medway dwellers (Billy Childish chief among them), Lupen beats a path that sets him apart from his peers. He has the perfect foils for his wild vocals and twinkling guitar lines too, the Murderbirds are certainly a well honed unit. Bob and Tom Langridge, on drums and bass/keyboards respectively, are the foundations on which these songs can pulse and grow and form the bedrock for Lupen and fiddle/mandolin player Craig Harff to duck and weave around each other. On the evidence tonight, these new tunes may be Lupen’s strongest yet… which can only be a good thing for anyone smart enough to get tickets for his gigs!

Thanks to Justin Parry (www.justinparryphotography.co.uk) for the photography.

LOZ BRIDGE AND THE BOX SOCIAL: Witches EP

Loz Bridge is a talent I’ve been fortunate enough to come across many times, making plain my admiration for him both as songwriter and performer. Thus it’s rather obvious that his debut EP is going to become a favourite part of my collection, especially as the titular Witches is, in my opinion, the best thing he’s written yet. We’ve all been trapped in a mind numbing office job at some point, but I for one have never viewed it quite the same since having a gander through Loz’s twisted window on the world. Make no mistake this is a song that would sit proudly on albums by the likes of Lupen Crook, Louden Wainwright and even Tom Waits. It is, in short, the perfect introduction to this young man’s music.

Things make a change with China, a stomping, swampy, blues that sounds great with the slight echo on the recording here, giving it a sense of history. Propelled by The Box Social, Andy Booth on (double) bass, drummer Matt E and Andrew Foster (an impressive young songwriter in his own right, who you’ll hear more about in the future) on banjo and guitar, we’re dragged through this raucous bar room vibe into the much more low key November, whose air of melancholy makes you want to cosy up in front of a roaring fire while the rain lashes down on the windows. From here, the tender Sarah and The Wolves shows that Bridge is as adept at gently plucking the emotions as he is at bombarding them. There’s the faintest hint of Thom Yorke and, by default, Buckley in the vocals here, which shows just how good this guy is!

The last track here, By The River, has followed Loz from his former incarnation as front man of Suburbian, where the song was like a dark, haunting version of a Snow Patrol track, to here, where it has a whiff of the South about it. You can almost see yourself on the shores of the Mississippi, watching the sun go down in this modern day Robert Johnson tale. Like I said before, we’re big fans of Loz Bridge before, so expect to hear more about this fella in the future!