Song, by Toad

Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – The Ragged Garden

I found this absolute gem on relatively new (and also Edinburgh-based – huzzah!) blog Spins & Needles, and I think it’s fucking brilliant. I’m not going to lie and say that this will appeal to everyone, but if any of you revel in the beauty of misery and pessimism taken to an almost amusingly unshackled pinnacle, then you will love this. To the unflinching growl of Glaswegian poet Gerry Mitchell is added macabre folk music with just a touch of the wrath of God about it, and the results are phenomenal.

It’s spoken word too, for the most part, but fear not – this is what spoken word is for. The sheer relish with which Mitchell unleashes his misery on us is completely captivating, and the rich rumble of his voice would almost be ruined by attempts to hit any kind of tune. The magic of his performance is in the way he drips his words out one at a time with a kind of love for each syllable and combination. There’s something utterly Scottish about this, but unless you’ve spent time sharing whiskey with a pickled Scots depressive in an empty pub as the rain absolutely batters down outside, then I doubt I could explain it properly.

Musically, the album is much the same. It’s all slow-moving and painfully lovely strings, played with a love-lorn scrape that I only really think I have ever heard Warren Ellis match. It’s not surprising then that I am reminded of Nick Cave’s gorgeous song Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum, done with The Dirty Three fittingly enough, which could almost be the sonic template for this entire album.

There’s a brand of Scottish miserablism that is in some ways so utterly over the top that there is an element of self-parody in it. A kind of pessimism that so relishes its own deplorable view of the world that it is actually almost a pleasure to indulge. And somehow this kind of album seems cut from just that cloth: so downbeat, so demoralised, so bleak that there is an oddly uplifting quality about it. They’re an odd bunch the Scots – there’s a kind of gloriousness to their gloominess at times.

Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – Widow Dressing
Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – The Ragged Garden of Your Eye
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum (with The Dirty Three)

gerry’s myspace | little sparta’s website| buy from fire records