Over the top, raucous folk music may be drifting slightly out of fashion these days, but I think I’d describe this album as I described the band’s Toad Session in 2009: “a complete, and completely splendid, mess”.

Also, in the interests of full-disclosure, I should point out that they are playing an album launch at Medina in Edinburgh on Saturday the 16th October.  Myself and Dylan from Blueback Hotrod will be sorting the gig, Jesus H. Foxx will also be playing, and tickets can be bought in advance here, for a fiver.

Anyhow, cynical self-promotion aside, the band weren’t entirely happy with their debut album, Follies in Great Cities.  I got the impression talking to them that whilst they didn’t want to criticise the record itself, they would in retrospect have done things rather differently.  The process seemed to be something they were just a little at odds with, and they said that they wanted this record to be a bit more raw, to try and capture the energy of their live shows.

This, they have certainly done, as this album careers along at a cracking pace, stumbling from one violin and harmony-fuelled stomp into the next.  In the early days of Honeytrap the combination of Big Dan’s lead and Little Dan’s impassioned wail gave the band’s eccentric yomps style enough, but adding Sophie into the vocal mix gives them even more toys to play with, and they use that variety really well, to add depth and texture to the style of the album.

Funnily enough, though, I really don’t like the first song.  When I first put it on I just thought it was a like a version of Honeytrap where all the vim and energy had been removed, and I was a little worried that I might not like the album, until the introductory yelp and squawk of violin which introduces Roslin is a Cylon reassured me that all was going to be just fine after all.

In terms of what they were aiming to capture with this recording, in contrast to the first, I think it’s fair to say that they’ve nailed it.  If I wasn’t at heart a socially awkward indie kid with a well-suppressed but nevertheless significant fear of making a tit of myself in public then this is the kind of music I would get hammered to and dance about like a fool in the front of the stage.  When the band recorded their Toad Session they (and we) were already pretty fucking plastered, and although that meant the whole thing was more than a little chaotic, they still played really well, and that’s kind of the vibe this record gives off – it’s like they’re all on the same penny farthing, careening out of control down a hill and just about managing not to fall off it, despite numerous close shaves.

In amongst all this excitement there isn’t much sign of some of their earlier, more emotionally intense (as opposed to just musically intense) material.  There are times when, in the middle of all the cavorting, it might have been nice to change emotional gears here and there and hear something a bit less caricatured, but nevertheless for the most part this is a raucous joy of a record.

Honeytrap – Roslin is a Cylon

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Honeytrap – Little Johnny Winter

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