A recording by THE HOUSEKEEPING SOCIETY has got be listened to in a deliberate way. This second HOUSEKEEPING album was written as a set of songs that could be listened to in a family car on a trip to the English Seaside, perhaps in the early 1960s. In real life it would do very well on any longer journey that needed a new world of listening to accompany that magic shift of mood that holidays allow.
The themes adopted by Yorkshire residents Ric Neale, Ivan Mack and Spencer Bayles arose from a shared imagination of a working class life in a seaside resort. It would be somewhat like Scarborough where families from Middlesbrough or Halifax might take a week in a guest house, spending their days doing their best to enjoy the amenities and attractions. It would be somewhere with railway day-trippers, ice cream vans and a journalist who carried a serious-money prize of £5 for the first person to show him a copy of the Daily News. You might remember the film of Brighton Rock. That kind of place. Trying hard to be fun, making the most of the season, ruefully carrying harder times, hinting at more exciting worlds and dreaming of breaking away forever.
Each track is a fragment from that seaside world, like the shells and pebbles that a child might carry home at the end of the holiday in the pockets of his grey flannel shorts. A suitcase, the ice cream van, the train journey, the sea fisherman, a love affair, economic decline among them. They are open-eyed about circumstances and wistful about what might have been. They are gentle and empathic. They are strongly evocative.
As musical creations they are beautifully constructed. Five of the 16 are less than a minute and a half, strengthening that sense of episodes and observed fragments. The arrangements are rich in instrumental range and texture. Found sounds, also used to good effect on "This Way To Power" are threaded in imaginatively and effectively. "Ice Cream Van" might have tempted a less thoughtful band into a quick blast of Mr Whippy. Two plucked single string lines and some unidentifiable percussion with a wash of surf at the end evoke the same childhood treat, but give the listener a much more striking sideways sense of the laid-up out-of season sadness. The transitions between "Start Of The Season", "Coasting" and "Where I Started Out" are magnificent. A range of talented friends have been coaxed in to help but every contribution sounds as though it was written to be just that and just there. There is no gratuitous cello just because someone has Grade 8. Credits go to Lizzy Hussie (violin and viola), Zosia Lewis Bekieta (saxophones), Anthony Davis (flute) and Additional vocals by Jacqui Wicks. Every part is meaningful and each is perfectly placed. Piano, glockenspiel and acoustic guitar on final track " The Seaside's Been Shut Down" are simple and beautifully balanced. They get the same respect and care as the strings and brass in other places.
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Tunes are very strong and words are as unobtrusively purposeful as the instrumentation. They have a polished confidence in natural language that is commoner in folk songs than pop songs. In "Working The Waves" the character sings "trusting our lives to each other … we've been working the waves". To be honest, this is folk music. THE HOUSEKEEPING SOCIETY will be playing these songs in interesting rooms with stories of their own. They will be playing to people who want to listen closely and absorb the spirit.
www.thehousekeepingsociety.com
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