SONGS featuring nursery rhymes re-imagined as death threats. Or 14th Century recording demons collecting mistakes in a sack. Maybe women mugging rich merchants and the aftermath of a car crash.
Not your average English folk themes for sure, but then contemporary folk band Stick in the Wheel have always done things very much their own way.
The radical East London duo of Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter are known for their intense live shows exploring the raw holler of folk, synths, spoken word and intricate guitar fuzz.
They present full-force re-workings of centuries-old work-songs with fragments of ancient texts that speak to contemporary issues of class – an inherently political act.
Their relentless approach to questioning traditional music forms is matched only by the energy that they bring to it.
And the duo are now back with a brand new album, A Thousand Pokes, along a UK-wide autumn tour which visits South Devon next month.
The new record is a satirical celebration of mistakes. It’s a joyous lambasting of everyone and everything that’s wrong in the world, against the real-time backdrop of global uncertainty, corruption and political unrest.
In their typical wry city-weary style, a beady eye is cast over those committing wrongs in plain sight.
Each song’s character is fully inhabited with a fierce tenacity by Kearey whether that’s punchy spoken word , heartfelt balladry or powerful psyche-folk - almost like a Cockney Piaf.
‘We sing these songs because we are the same people that would have sung them 200 years ago’ she said.
‘It’s not a fantasy, or a cosplay, it’s a reality, for us. Trying to make the music ours, our own tradition, to tease out a link to past communities and all their threads and tendrils, mix and match as people assimilated into the city.’
The gentle persuasion of Carter’s dobro guitar is at once twisted into thug-like distorted riffs, and teased into intricate deft lacework melodies with a Baroque flair, a chimaera that reinforces and underpins the heavy rhythms that are another trademark of Stick In The Wheel’s work.
‘We wanted to make a record that sounded like us, where we’re from, in all its complexity, added Carter.
‘At the core is our version of traditional music, made in the city, with influences from everywhere”.’
The essential elements of the record imagines a sound of traditional London music, where the musical continuum is unbroken by the population decimated by the world wars, or by gentrification and social cleansing that has forced communities apart, and yet absorbs all the influences of all the communities that call London their home.
Stick in the Wheel will be performing at Things Happen Here, Dartington, on November 30.