"Nowhere" was released mid-way through 2003. Recorded in New York and produced by outsider hero Johnny Dowd, it's an astonishingly below-the-radar piece of work. Copies are available at gigs, and via independent shops in Sheffield. But you will have to hunt. You must hunt.
Maybe we might start listening with track three: "Love Locked". Loose jazz drumming, glissando double bass, Willie Nelson-like drunk lovelorn lyrics and a honey of a tune. Sounds just like the punk blues trio that words cannot encompass. As Andy Weaver (vocals and slide guitar) and Norton Lees (double bass) harmonise on the chorus it’s like two Vickers tanks pirouetting in a rainy car park. Mik Glaisher is the kind of drummer who serves his band, but who’s a treat to listen to in his own right - rather in the mould of the Dirty Three's Jim White.
These guys have distilled the bitterest and strongest of all the draughts from the people's music over the last couple of generations. Blues, country, rock, punk. Whatever. The 50-word reviews will say it’s blues. Blues Festivals won’t touch it because it's too punk. It’s way too jazz to be punk. Children will spit it out like it was black olives and anchovy spiked with sour chillies.
As long as you use a hammer and a large old rusty screwdriver, you should be able to prise this stuff out of any category it gets shelved in. "Nowhere" is a great title, and says a lot about what you're going to get. Just look at Martin Bedford's cover photograph. These are songs about life on the fringes: psychologically, physically, geographically, economically and artistically. Weaver's voice, with hints of Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits in the bluesed-up, sussed-out rasp, is a real attention-magnet.
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The 12 songs, one trad and eleven by the band are tightly written, economically delivered and totally bullet proof. "Zombified" surges and stutters like a crowd of the undead, scattered temporarily by Weavers howling slide guitar. "Paper Houses" spatters subterranean homesick rhymes and a killer chorus like The Streets gone adult with added musicianship. He sings "urban foxes in the telephone boxes, tryin' to see what the speakin' clock says/ Two people fall in love" It sparkles. "Howling Road" is a gently sombre tune with big drums, a distant echoing harmony voice and a bowed bass like passing traffic. The slide guitar cuts in like a reminder of death, and the "devil is with you … on the howling road" shudders like he knew what he was singing about. "Spring Isn’t Coming This Year" has an open-structured Jim Morrison spookiness about it. Truth be told, something special can be said about each and every one of these songs; there are no passenger tracks.
The production is precise and honest. The raw power and deft touch of the band are both there at the front. One or two nice ideas are added to the backdrop too, without fuss or flash. But Chicken Legs Weaver are a band who know their own mind, and who are long-steeped in their own sound. It's a classic hidden album.
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