Eagleowl – For the Thoughts You Never Had
Well I’ve been excited about this ever since the band generously donated a song to the sampler I gave out at the Song, by Toad Records launch party. That song was Blanket, and it’s gorgeous, and so is this.
I’m becoming an increasing fan of the mini-album, EP, whatever you want to call it. Three to eight songs seems the ideal length for something to hang together really nicely, without any filler or any temptation for the listener’s attention to wander three-quarters of the way through.
Funnily enough, if you did that here, you’d miss all the best bits, although at five songs long that just isn’t going to happen. It’s odd for such a short piece of work to have instrumentals and little minute-long intro songs, but it kind of reminds me of their gigs. Eagleowl’s songs are often not all that distinct – they sort of run on into another, with a melody or a verse emerging from a shifting sea of sound that moves very subtly about the landscape, remaining really rather elusive until you surprisingly find yourself humming something, without really having noticed that you were.
They’ve gone a bit pop here too – Motherfucker is a work of genius to exceed even Blanket – and the Eagleowl singalong bar is suddenly and surprisingly raised. I am reminded of Rob St. John’s slightly shirty assertion that he does not play folk music, he plays pop music. Due to the language I can’t imagine Motherfucker ever getting played on the radio, but it beats the shit out of 99% of the stuff that does make it.
They are a painstakingly slow bunch, these three, and it took a seredipitous meeting with a recording engineer they really liked to get them to suddenly fire out these songs. Normally, this might have taken years of faffing, and this really does go to show just how important the actual human beings involved can be in this industry. Whatever has caused it to finally happen, the emergence of this record is a bloody blessing for the lot of us. It even comes with the ever-elusive Mrs. Toad stamp of approval: ‘haunting’, she called it. Now me liking it is one thing, but that badge of honour is one bestowed on very few bands indeed.
Eagleowl – Motherfucker
mmmmm………………………
………………….kidding!
I actually couldn’t agree more. For the first time I have eagleowl on my ipod and it’s a better ipod for it!
I love this record. The title track in particular gets better every time I hear it. Top. Notch.
yeah, it’s the title track the blew me away also. when i first heard it live I just stood there with goose bumps. tis a gem.
Well we’ll be putting the Grand Spam List to good use over the coming weeks to try and get this out there as best we can. Unfortunately Motherfucker, the most obviously radio friendly tune, has some rather obvious titular and lyrical drawbacks. But balls to that, it’s a great record anyway so who cares about that.
“slightly shirty”? eh? i guess what i was getting at is that i think for anything to be classed as “folk” it needs to make obvious nods to the past, a continuation of a tradition if you will. i know it’s contentious to label anything…and i’m a total un-fan of “nu folk” “post folk” “weird folk” blah blah blah as genres. pop neatly covers all the bases.
and this EP is this: STUNNING
Well it makes me laugh Rob, because I entirely agree with you actually. I mean, I call it alt-folk or agit-folk or whatever, mostly as a mental shortcut so people vaguely guess what sort of sound I’m talking about. But face it, if it wasn’t a successful pop song, we wouldn’t be listening to it at all.
Un-fan?
They could call it Mother Star.
(First one to get the pop culture triva reference wins a prize!)
Bart has just emailed me to say that Vic Galloway played Motherfucker quite recently and had to have his producer painstakingly smudge out all of the naughty bits. Brilliant!
that’s right – “un-fan”. deal with it
Surely ‘Motherstarrer’? Stones first, then REM. What’s the prize?
Correct! Plus a bonus point for the REM reference.
Matthew, give Martin a prize.
…
I was meant to go to their gig at a church at the west end, but i had too many pints in the afternoon, missed at least three intended buses and finally gave up and stayed in the pub, my friend had to go, to meet his brother and i scoffed from the comfortable bar stool….
This track is great! Feel like a twat now…..
izzy, if it’s a consolation I missed the withered hand gig cause I got wasted and was home before 8pm the night before! it’s not much consolation but I was gutted at missing that one. hope that makes you feel better?!
A little bit… At least i’m not the only one on this site who drinks irresponsibly (like i thought i was!!)
Couple of gigs coming up in September though, i will remain sober for at least one of these!
you can catch eagleowl at the wee red bar on 25th Sept I think – so there you go. problem solved and you’ll feel better about yourself – unless you get horribly drunk and miss it again. i was out with matthew and dylan etc last night and not one drop of alcohol was touched. fine upstanding citizens are we. matthew didn’t say one inappropriate thing all night………………
What a relief.
Actually, Izzy, are you working at the moment, because we’re off down the King’s Wark in a moment for a couple of pints and a plateful of fish.
obviously I’m lying because you said so many ludicrously awful things.
I’m on tonight, Matthew, at the day job just now – much less fun than the Wark!
G’day….y’all bums….never posted on this blog before……anyway it’s monday morning, i’m at work….bored….eagleowl rock and i have issues with this
‘Eagleowl’s songs are often not all that distinct…..’
But i guess we can talk about this over a drink…sometime……maybe…you art critic you!!!
later and love
I don’t mean that they all sound the same, more that a lot of the longer songs drift slightly in and out of the melody, and that to an extent the live performances have that kind of gentle rise and fall too – like going from Thoughts You Never Had to Blanket, for example.
i get you…..maybe it’s your use of certain adjectives