Hmm, well, this is jolly nice isn’t it.  Erland and the Carnival really does live up to its name, not in an ostentatiously proficient circus music sort of way, just in having a slightly cocked hat and a pleasant spring in its step.  This is essentially a largely acoustic (well, gentle, anyway) album of indie-pop, but it has been assembled with energy and a confident sprightliness, so it ends up having a definite, highly approachable personality of its own.

There’s a touch of hippy psychedelia about it at times, flavours of Hendrix and the Doors even, but they aren’t really all that prominent, and there’s really no edge to this record at all.  The zip comes not from the bite but from the pace of the thing, but certainly if you like your music to have a certain uneasiness or tension to it then you are listening to the wrong album.

It really doesn’t fade either, continuing its parade of short, clever, infectious melodies right to the very end.  In a sense I shouldn’t really be crediting the band all that much here as a lot of these songs were written by other people, but still, assembling a good record is a hugely underrated skill, irrespective of where the songs come from.  Some of these songs are old folk songs, some are covers (mind you, the likes of Jackson C. Frank, who wrote My Name is Carnival, is receding far enough into the past that the line between ‘trad. arr.’ and a straightforward cover starts to lose any real meaning), but some of it is original material too, and it’s all pretty seamlessly integrated into what is a very coherent, unified album.

The band themselves are something of a super-ish group, too.  The details are to be found on their Wikipedia page, and there’s no point repeating it all here, because it doesn’t really matter.  It does interest me, however, in the sense that I am forever prattling on about musicians losing something of their edge, or a little bit of dynamism, as they get older and more well-established but, for all this is a fairly polished piece of work, you certainly wouldn’t accuse it of being excessively clinical or uninspired – pretty much the opposite in fact.  It’s something I am very happy to be wrong about.

It’s a funny one though, this album.  It’s not a record I am going to become excited or passionate about, but it is still really good, and I am really enjoying it.  In fact, maybe that’s what’s confusing about it – how much I like it, considering the fact that for some reason it just doesn’t quite generate that feeling of buzz in me.  So, strangely contradictory, but a really enjoyable album nevertheless.

Erland & the Carnival – My Name is Carnival

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Erland & the Carnival – Tramps and Hawkers

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