James Lindsay and Michael Wood, with contributions from Hayley Hutchinson and Graham Hodge are THE FLEWS. THE FLEWS are based in York.
Their debut album shows off high ambition, a breadth of influence and a brave willingness to experiment with new ways of presenting and accompanying their highly individual songs.
The basic ensemble on the recorded material is one voice, one or two guitars, a cello, a piano and some tambourine with other bits and pieces dropping in. The songs are reflective and sometimes poignant. There are cheerful eruptions of up-tempo counterbalance.
All this sounds as though I would go for THE FLEWS in a pretty big way. THE MAGIC NUMBERS have used a similarly open-ended approach to achieve a pretty and joyful leftfield celebration of poppy folk fragments. But so far I feel as though I haven’t "got" THE FLEWS just yet. And I don’t think I'm completely unjustified in that failure.
Perhaps, having dwelt so long in the backyards of lo-fi, folk-inflected WILL OLDHAM-ite and alternative approaches I start to feel a bit jealous as the second and third generations pile in all wide-eyed and confident with their coyly out-of-tune piano, their tricksy match lighting song intro, their voices just missing the note or settling into speech when the tune asks too much.
There's been a recent rash of undulating cello parts that wistfully and teasingly disguise (but don't salve) the missed comfort of a real bass line. I'm hearing too many lyrics that teeter on the edge between poetry and mawkishness. C of E Youth Chaplain style acoustic guitar thrashing is starting to grate more than a little.
These things all make me nervous. When the artists proclaim "songs that challenge preconceptions of instrumentation and production" I have to ask "whose preconceptions?" I also suspect an appropriation of lo-fi quirkiness as just another genre option, that you can study for a couple of months and then apply at will.
Because, harsh though it may seem, this album can’t be judged against the dross of popular music. It declares itself to be part of that other world where music, poetry and a different set of ethics (and aesthetics) have prevailed for some time past. And so far, it comes out as a promising start in catching up to where the likes of BILL CALLAGHAN, MERCURY REV, NICK DRAKE, ROBERT WYATT and NINA NASTASIA had arrived quite a while back. By these lights, THE FLEWS are more aspiring than pioneering.
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As you rush dehydrated and staggering out of the bleak deserts of THE HIVES, THE LIBERTINES or THE ORDINARY BOYS, THE FLEWS' debut would be a very welcome first draught of real music. But you would soon want to move on to the better-established luxury versions.
Title song "Slow Mover" is the most notable and convincing tune on the album "No reflection" is lit up by HAYLEY HUTCHINSON's additional vocal line that evokes AMERICA'S "Horse with no Name" before launching itself into some quasi rock crescendo of top-of-register cello and thumping acoustic. (and inevitable quiet-after-storm ending). "Hide It With a Notice" that follows is a bit of a low point, trying to show (perhaps) that you don’t need big amps, drums and huge bass to rock. On the evidence of strident staccato voice and guitar hammering and John Cale-esque cello howling available, you probably do. In general this very exposed music needs a more assured technical mastery and much more subtle and deft recording techniques.
Despite (perhaps because of) the strength of my reservations I would reckon that next time around, on the promise of what "Slow Mover" has attempted, THE FLEWS are going to be worth some serious attention. I don't usually get so involved in music that I haven't wholly enjoyed.
www.theflews.co.uk
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