The Garbage & The Flowers - 'Stoned Rehearsal' (Quemada)

Were this a lesser band, Stoned Rehearsal would be a case of scraping the bottom of the barrel to release something, anything, by a band that (criminally) left too few recordings. It's just a dictaphone recording from what I assume was a practice space, but that's OK since almost everything on their "proper" album is also recorded on a dictaphone. The title's pretty much perfect as a description; a rehearsal this is, complete with stops, chatter, and tuning breaks. There's nothing provided to indicate when this took place, though we get a 4 page well-typed lyric sheet to sing along. This is great because it enables you to read 'Henry, Where is Lyon?' as a short story, which is really is - a long dark rumination on relationships set through some characters in a vague, gun-orientated narrative. It's the pick of the album for me, as it lumbers along it's chord progression, bassline meandering and the open hi-hat keeping time awkwardly - but over this, Helen Johnstone and (I'm guessing) Yuri Frusin take us through this journey, casually harmonising but not consistently. 'Though the world has come undone', indeed - this, like the rest of Stoned Rehearsal, is a song unique to this record, not appearing on Eyes Rind which suggests it was recorded later - and it feels like it's just teetering on a precipice of something intangible - but something that is welcoming and inviting. Other songs are less cohesive - 'River of Sem' takes some tries to get going (and Johnstone has some fun with her delivery);  'Call Out the Dogs Again' falls apart at the end - but this only serves to make this more intimate. 'Elisabeth' is adapted from a Herman Hesse poem and the vocal interplay, though barely above a murmur, is lovely, and the plodding drums (and dog barks!) are still forming the song. The one thing I find frustrating about this wonderful band is that everything feels so archival, like a document, rather than something living and growing. Or maybe that's exactly what the mystery is. I don't think a lot of artists could get away with releasing a practice tape on vinyl years later, but with Garbage and the Flowers it feels vital, like a missing piece. Johnstone is part of a new project called Caroline No that has recently released a (great!) tape, which retains some of the somnambulant motion of tG&tF's more genteel side. So, while I'm pretty sure this is all we're gonna get from them (the vault is surely dry), this feels appropriate as the final gasp.

Fotheringay (A&M)

My copy of this is so beat-to-shit that it's buried in surface noise, and skips a good it bit too. I actually fear for the safety of my stylus and thus rarely listen to it. Also, despite being a pretty solid record, I never get any craving to hear it. This picks up where you'd expect it to - taking the Fairport sound but bringing in a stronger Dylan/Band influence, most obvious in the cover of 'Too Much of Nothing but also on 'Winter Winds', a less languid but otherwise derivative take on the 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' vibe. Co-lead vocalist (and Denny's husband) Trevor Lucas sounds pretty good against Denny; the timbre of his voice isn't a million kilometres away from Richard Thompson's, though, so this feels precisely like the second act it is. Additionally, naming your band after one of your iconic songs from your last band can't help but cast a cloud over whatever you do next. Through all the static I can hear how nicely this is produced; a good drum sound, lots of reverb on the guitar lines, and the voices soaring above it all. I think they only ever made this one record; Denny went solo with the excellent The North Star Grassman and the Ravens and I don't know whatever happened to Lucas. It's all what one might expect from a Fairport Convention spinoff, and that's perfectly OK. Denny's perfect touch is why this is remarkable; the Lucas-led songs barely stand out. There's some nice electric guitar leads, but it's the wispy, rolling Fairport sound that I like the most; Denny's 'The Pond and the Stream' being a great example of this. The cover art is pretty bonkers when you stop to actually look at it; on my beaten, faded copy it feels strangely, I dunno, authoritative.

John Davis - 'Blue Mountains' (Shrimper)

I usually try to post an image that actually looks like my copy, but in this case I'm lazy so I'm just using the only one I could find, which is the CD cover I guess.  The only difference is that instead of the title appearing left of the flower picture, it is split to be above and below.  So, imagine.  And then imagine a world where the effeminate open-folk stylings of John Davis are given a more solid indie-rock backbone, but enough to (mostly) maintain the spacious fragility of his songwriting.  Side 1 has two hit singles, or they would-be if anyone ever heard them - 'Jeep Cherokee' and 'I'll Burn'.  I should probably add that in addition to the general public having to hear these, they would have to really welcome a change in popular tastes to be proper "hits". But I find them catchy as hell; toe-tapping, too.  In between you get 'I Took Flight' which is about as beautiful and lyrical as anything I've ever heard from Davis.  'Sadness, well I knew ye...' and that's a lovely couplet;; but then, the aforementioned 'I'll Burn' which is (possibly) about Davis being thrust into a deep-fryer!  Blue Mountains is such an excellent fucking record that it brings a smile to my face every time I hear it.  It's a mixture of the studio stuff, recorded with Shrimper producer-god Bob Durkee, and some home recordings which resemble the fragile freakpulse of Pure Night.  There's nothing on these besides guitar or maybe organ ('Tethers' ends side 1 in a beautiful malestrom of darkness).  Flipping the record over we get more of a studio side, with some really singsong jams - 'The Way You Touch Me Makes Me Laugh' and the really underreated 'Ready', which reminds me of Warn Defever's songwriting for His Name is Alive from around the same era.  I'm not sure if John Davis was making a stab at commercial success here, though the hit Folk Implosion song that predated this may have had some influence.  Despite the more regular rhythm and hi-fi production, it still feels really homemade and honest.  His lispy vocals are rather uncompromising, though that word usually means an extreme/aggressive aesthetic and here, they're just, please forgive me, really wimpy. But my gosh, I love Blue Mountains, and Davis has been silent ever since which truly, truly saddens me.  You can't help but love a record with a song called 'I Freaked Out Like a Big Truck', and of course I have a major major soft spot for the whole Shrimper/Inland empire/bi-fi scene (though Davis is a New Englander as this title indicates).  This scene (which also includes Refrigerator, Simon Joyner, and the Mountain Goats, all of whom I love and will get to eventually) strikes a perfect balance and came at the right time; clearly people making amateurish-yet-sophisticated, romantic-yet-contemporary songs in their bedroom is still prevalent, and the democratising of this all these days, via myspace and the death of the music industry etc -- make the bi-fi scene  even more awesome to me, because it was happening in the mid-late 90s..  I think what did it for me (besides the fact this music hit me when I was aged 16-20, which was perfect formative timing) is the way these artists also took over the means of production.  Dennis Callaci dubbing tapes for Shrimper is a zillion times more inspiring to me than uploading tracks to Soundcloud.  Maybe this self-created scene seems better to me because it wasn't so easy; the Internet wasn't used, or maybe only in the most infant form; I realise this shouldn't make the music itself inherently better, but I'm just trying to figure out my own biases, I guess.

Bügsküll & the Big White Cloud (Scratch)

This is technically a collaboration with someone named the Big White Cloud, but it's hard to tell what Mr. Cloud actually brings to this that wasn't already in the Bügsküll arsenal (ah, those lovely umlauts have returned again!). This record begins with a driving stadium rock jam called 'Fair Are the Sails' (or at least, if Bügsküll played a stadium). The bedroom electro-psych we've heard emerge over the past few records (and we are missing Distracted Snowflake Volume Two, remember) is now emphasised with a driving 4/4 beat behind it and triumphant, anthemic riffs. The long second track, 'We Understand That', builds up on the thick layers of the opener with a goofy come-and-go electronic beat, and occasional vocal intrusions - a brief processed vocal part that serves as a type of hook, and then some murky megaphone speaking. The speaking continues on side one's brief coda, a plucky metal-tank inhabitor that somehow fits with the back cover text about whales and whatnot. Side two furthers the 'inside' psychedelia, as the layers are quite thick and the notes quite melodic. Whomever the Big White Cloud is, they certainly steer Byrne to a more fun, accessible direction - until the last track, 'Tweedlebug Jamboree', which is perhaps the longest and most out there piece heard on any of these records. There's no tonal center, and it's assembled from bits and pieces - and it's dark. As dark as some of Snakland's bad karma. As the sendoff track for our Bugskull run, it's a good choice, as it somehow encapsulates much (if not everything) that is great about Bugskull. And overall, this album feels like a logical place to go after Distracted Snowflake. It builds on the confidence of that record and the achievements of the early work, but without being repetitive. Mr. Byrne pretty much dropped off the map after this - nine years later, another LP was released, but it dates from the Snowflake period - so maybe this is a swansong not just of my own accumulation but of Bugskull in general.