Garbage Island is the latest album from eco-conscious DIY band The Burning Hell whose main core is the trio of Ariel Sharratt, Matthias Kom and Jake Nicoll who like to tour the less toured parts of the world and try to make the world a better place to be. This album is about the damage we as humans have done to the world and all the garbage that is currently floating around the world's oceans.
The album opens with No Peace a rather gentle indie folk song of foreboding full of worry for everything that's about to destroy the peace they seek, they hope and pray for peace in the middle east, which would be lovely if it ever became a reality, sadly it's just a fever dream, but at least there is some super cool piano parts to listen too.
The albums main single Nigel The Gannet is next and it's sort of a sequel to Making Plans for Nigel by XTC, it's a sequel in the loosest sense as Nigel has become a lonely or is he a lone Gannet, who chose as his partner a stone gannet becoming an internet sensation along the way, this is a smart piece of synth pop with all sorts of ideas going on as well as a neat view of isolation and the need some people have to be alone without being lonely that I've heard enough times now to be singing along with it.
They keep with the ornithological theme with Birdwatching that in places reminds me musically of Bird doggin' but with far less salacious lyrics, this is fast and tense and rather twitchy in places and sounds far more frantic than you'd expect any Birdwatchers to be unless they have gone all 1970's style Birdwatching.
Dirty Microphones has a lush Hispanic feel to it as they wonder what those dirty microphones have lurking in them, the germs etc, while they play ska in Ohio or at South by Southwest this is a cool biopic song.
The Last Normal Day has the feel of a song by They Might Be Giants as they sing about the day before life as we knew it ended. Or this song crashed my computers music player and wiped 100's of albums including this one and my review pile, so after I have recovered some of the tunes, I am carrying on again as if normality has returned and we never shut half the world down before we could hear one more cool sax solo.
Empty World is a great tribute to the B-52's and all sorts of other things, they feel like they have lost since well the end of normality, they sing about the empty world that existed during the pandemic lockdowns.
Minor Characters sadly isn't a song based on Joyce Johnsons magnificent beat novel, but instead is a flute folk song about a day at the seaside and what goes down.
All I Need is full of toothsome harmonies married to some accordion and a drum roll as they sing about DIY instruments and the fun they have at live shows. It also has a brilliant outro.
Swan Boat feels like a lullaby to rock your baby to sleep too. Bird Queen Of Garbage Island has an almost indie folk rap feel in a way that reminds me of 4 Non-Blondes, but with a bloke singing if that's not too odd a comparison for an eco-folk song that has a typewriter solo in it.
Speechlessness is that feeling we've all had in recent years at the next big scare, what to hoard next Double AA batteries or loo roll and some thoughts on animal cruelty.
The album closes with The End Of The End Of The World that feels like a very 2020's kind of phrase, very much of our times, as one paradigm crashes and a new one is born, will we be re-born into a better world, or will it be even more of a car crash than what we currently have, this is gently strummed and thoughtful end to this album.
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