Review:
'iLiKETRAiNS'
'PROGRESS REFORM'
- Label: 'Fierce Panda / Talitres Records'
- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: 'June 26th 2006'- Catalogue No: 'TAL027'
|
Our Rating:
|
|
The release of this seven track, 32 minute CD is confirmation of a feeling I've had since my first Whisperin' & Hollerin' review of iLiKeTRAiNS in early 2004. At that time they were playing at Base Camp (The Vine) in Leeds, and trying out a new identity as a loud electric band with epic ambition.
Having moved from Worcestershire to Leeds, David Martin and Guy Bannister, a folky sort of duo, had fallen in with fellow students Alistair Bowis, Ashley Dean and Simon Fogal. Together they discovered the joy of loud guitars, multi-media creativity and a serious-minded approach to songwriting.
The ambitious howl of that epic sound notwithstanding, my feeling about the band at that time centred on the song writing. A fearsome sound with dramatic surges makes most sense when the story being carried in the song is strong enough to warrant the emotional labour of listening and shuddering along. The songs were already good by then. They have grown, matured and been added to since. The seven songs on this fabulous collection (a mini-album?) are time-stopping tragedies that make strong connections with the history their audience have grown up with, or will now want to learn.
Each tragedy has its backdrop and emotional content declared and presented through the music – huge guitars and drums with subtle and beautifully played cornet, violins, viola, cello and keyboards. Not forgetting the choir, of course. David Martin's smoothly rich voice says just enough to hint at the deaths and the madness, understating the menace and making it all the more real in the process. Only in the mysterious "CiTiZEN" does the voice become shrouded and indistinct. Elsewhere the clarity and presence is enormous. However loud the band gets, the voice is right there, brushing your cheek with its meticulous enunciation and unbearable news.
In "THE BEECHiNG REPORT", iLiKETRAiNS have captured the bleak despondency of thousands of individual working people, brought low well before Mrs Thatcher perfected the dark art. Their choir of friends and fellow Leeds musicians open their throats and sing a fine elegy for the centre of gravity and dignity that were lost when the axe of Beeching's cold truth fell. It's a finely judged and passionate lament, with no judgement and no anger. If you feel anger, it’s your own, and more profound for it being discovered, and not forced upon you.
This is how they seem to work. The songs are like true folk songs. They don’t protest, they reveal truth and they throw light into dark places.. The bare bones of a story are laid out. In some cases, only a few of the bones. But they are obviously real, carefully researched and keenly edited, and our imaginations are loaded up and fired to land wherever we let them. It’s story telling, not preaching. We hear as much in them as we can bear. No more, no less.
|
"TERRA NOVA" and "NO MiLiTARY PARADE" present oblique views of Scott's disastrous Antarctic expedition, looking sideways, as if staring too directly would blind us. "NO MiLiTARY PARADE", (with those magnificent string parts played by Lucy Deakin and Helen Clarke) sees the fable from the perspective of a disgraced would-be member of Amundsen's successful team. He is drowning his sorrows and anticipating suicide while Amundsen's team reach the South Pole weeks before Scott. "TERRA NOVA" is Scott's own stoical, doomed and, of course, more famous diary.
"ROOK HOUSE FOR BOBBY" makes some sense of the bizarre life and times of chess genius Bobby Fischer. "CiTiZEN", nudges at the paradox of Fischer's anti-Semitism and the offence he gave to the Icelandic people who had offered him citizenship. "THE ACCiDENT" (poisoning) and "STAiNLESS STEEL" (a stabbing) deal in more private, but no less archetypal grief and madness.
In each case the morbid gloom and disaster are wrung out for their humanity and for the bathos of improbable hope. The band are not gloomy people, and the serenity that follows full exposure to this wonderful collection is, simply, uplifting. Play it loud and play it often. Of the songs we have heard (and bought) already, the newer, definitive versions on this CD are bigger and clearer, opening the songs out in all their glory. The production has a clarity and confidence about it that makes the quality of the sings shine out. Comparisons back to SIGUR ROS are no longer relevant. ILiKETRAiNS are travelling out on their own expedition.
www.iLiKETRAiNS.co.uk
|
| |
author: Sam Saunders
|
[Show all reviews for this Artist]
|
READERS COMMENTS
7 comments still available (max 10)
[Click here to add your own comments]
Sam, another cracking appraisal of the fine quality to be found on the 'other' side of The Pennines. Any chance of a listen to this release????
------------- Author: Mabs
16 July 2006
If something deserves 10/10, then I love to see it given: Weighing up my tiredness of carbon copied unimaginative releases against petty, scathing reviews based on the writer's taste, the disparaging, and often cheap snides at the attempts of musicians prepared to stand and fall by their work are all too easy for any old sentence-stringer to get away with. 10/10 is not an all time gold seal
------------- Author: Mabs
16 July 2006
It's an assessment of what the record sets out to be, and a measure of how well this is achieved. Too many folks are too quick to go for the jugular, and though this is equally brave, it is obvious from your reviews that you love music truly. Thanks again!!!
------------- Author: Mabs
16 July 2006
|
|
PROGRESS REFORM
|
 |
