Anton Barbeau mentioned earlier when we ran the ear rule over that excellent Fruits de Mer ‘a new career in a new town’ covers compilation, also features on another collection put together by the folks over at Mystery Lawn Music. The set called ‘friends and frenemies’ is an eighteen gathering of talent, the strength and content of the cuts within all strongly vying for affection. Alas as ever time constraints deter a full appraisal of everything here, if we think on, a revisit may well be required. As mentioned Anton Barbeau features with ‘broken in two’ a shadowy sonic fracture line that creaks and sways with a strangely gloomed glam tweaked shanty motif that precariously teeters with a cooling steam punk engineering. Somewhere else henry plotnick turns in some tenderly tear stained introspection with the frail and fragile neo classical murmuring of ‘7’ which in truth had us recalling the touching tones of Antonymes in so much as his use of space and poise. With a title ‘its like dancing’ you’d might be fooled into thinking that Black Butterfly Gang’s offering might be an effervescent club floor hugging toaster, you’d be wrong for what emerges is some gorgeous intricately picked riff work all softly smouldered, lilting, lulling and lazy eyed, that dinkily navigates its way to drawing the invisible dots between John Fahey and Sophia. Last up for this brief visit, Allen Clapp dish up ‘friend collector’ – a wonderfully vintage sounding 70’s slice of pristinely radiant soul pop that swoons to the grooves of a ‘holland’ era Beach Boys while simultaneously touching bass with the likes of Ashley Parks, the Panda Gang, the Brigadier and Ben Folds 5. https://mysterylawnmusic.bandcamp.com/album/friends-frenemies
the sunday experience 