Catalogue no. JMMCD006
Release date: 09/03/2009
Format: Digital, CD
Track Listing:
01. Alfred, Light The Fires
02. Lung (Live & Acoustic @ Express FM)
03. Alaska (Hexa Decibelz Remix)
“Alfred, Light The Fires” is the début single from loose musical collective The B of the Bang, the brain-child of a musician known only as Wit. It will appear on the forthcoming album “Beginning.Middle.End”, scheduled for a May release.
The lead track is loosely in the category of indie-folk, but it is tinged with gothic/Hammer Horror influences. It is what 80s Matchbox B-Line disaster would sound like if they were an indie-folk band. There is also a touch of Editors about the vocals. Despite this description of what is going on, it all works rather well.
The b-sides consist of an acoustic version of “Lung” and a Hexa Decibelz remix of “Alaska”. I’m not sure of the worth of “versions” of songs especially for introducing new bands (it is better to hear untinkered with songs) but these are worth a listen.
“Lung” is quite downbeat, and the returning Editors-style vocals make it quite dark, but it is rather good. “Alaska” has gentle electronic touches, which builds to a dark, bass-y electro-indie climax.
This is a promising release.
Jelly Maid Music in Portsmouth have had some good stuff out during their couple of years in existence, most recently the Autons albums which I was raving about last month.
The latest release on the label is out on March 9th from The B of the Bang, a collective led by the gentleman above, a man only known as Wit. According to their Myspace, he is also assisted by Maff, JD and Jackamuss. Imagine Broken Records invading the soul of Neil Hannon out of the Divine Comedy and driving the Duke Special out. The song is called ‘Alfred Light The Fires.’
To these ears it’s rather special, with a delightfully honky-tonk piano in the background.
Their myspace is one of those delightfully worded ones that makes you wonder if they’re checking you’re paying attention. To, uh, wit:
The B of the Bang is a collective of human beings led by a multi-instrumentalist known only as Wit.
The B of the Bang is a lo-fi, electronica-tinged, anti-folk cake with a gothic, grunge icing. Topped with de-tuned fuzz cherries.
The B of the Bang is, in some instances, Wit wending his way on his lonesome journeys as a melancholy troubador with a beat-up acoustic guitar and a special box-o-tricks that makes bleeps and fuzzy noises gurgling contentedly in the background.
The B of the Bang is, in other instances, a collection of musicians with a revolving line-up (and a few splendid regulars in the form of Jackamus, JD and Maff…) propping up the musical bar.
The B of the Bang use guitars, loops, mandolins, white noise, xylophones, accordions, banjos, feedback, shouting and percussion to conjur up melodies and maladies for the 21st century.
The B of the Bang exists in an age of copyists and bandwagon-jumpers. Brigands, blaggards and ne’er do wells. It’s sole purpose is to sound unlike anything else you’ve ever heard whilst sounding exactly like everything else you’d ever want to hear.
The B of the Bang is really just the sound of one man slowly losing his grip on reality.
The B of the Bang will cure gout.
And tennis elbow.
Thank you.’
Better believe it…
The B Of The Bang are, perhaps the most enigmatic of Portsmouth’s bands. Their lineup seems to be in constant flux, their sound is near impossible to pigeon hole and their frontman, Wit, is at once both a charismatic frontman and a seemingly reserved songwriter.
All of this, of course, makes for a jumbled and ragged outfit and it’s in this dishevelled approach that the charm of the band lies. With this, their debut single on the Jelly Maid label, we finally see Wit and his myriad bandmates make a record that’s every bit as exciting as their live shows.
Alfred Light The Fires is a beautiful track that shows a slightly mischievous side of Wit. There’s a hint of Loz Bridge in here too, fitting as Loz is one of the many musicians to crop up on stage with the band. The shifts in tempo and style seem strange at first, but with each listen the song grows and spreads to the degree that I’m now very much in love!
With a live version of the stunning Lung, recorded for Express FM, and a remixed take on Alaska this is a disc well worth investing a few pounds in. It certainly whets the appetite in anticipation of the forthcoming B Of The Bang album!
The B Of The Bang release their debut single Alfred, Light The Fires on Jelly Maid Music on 9th March. With the mainstream gradually reinvestigating the goth genre and the continued proliferation of the so called new folk scene, it is perhaps unsurprising that a single like this should come along. Alfred, Light The Fires is goth folk for the noughties. It’s a vaudeville freak show of a song set in a time distant place where typewriters and cherubs are still common language. Lead vocalist Christopher Whitear is the baritoned Victorian ringleader warming up for the greatest amateur dramatics show of his life, whilst underneath him pianos, acoustic guitars and accordions all find their place in this oddly structured tempo shifting song. Despite all of this unplugged music hall strangeness this single is oddly charming, with its beleaguered dickensian gravitas bringing a neatly formed melody. It’s like the Editors and Eighties Matchbox B Line Disaster out in a field, but it’s very much a field of its own.
Like British Sea Power gone Wicker Man, the PS demo faves launch with a sombre Scott Walker vocal and deliciously evil waltz. Superb stuff. 8/10
Take Nu folk, a broodingly dark soundscape and a Jim Morrison-style baritone, shove it all in a blender, and you’ll get this sublime track. It may be hard to pigeonhole, but it’s even harder to shake out of your mind once it’s finished – we like!
Like a spooky, cabaret-version of Franz Ferdinand in charge of the college music departments instrument store, dramatic, ever twisting and toe-tappingly perverse-great stuff, in other words…
How very English sounding, an English baritone and a touch of darkness to their somber-voiced, a man called Wit so it seems, indie-cabaret and their ever shifting mood pushing refinement. They’re from Portsmouth, they have a charm of their own, an undercurrent of crafted electronica, a hint of what some called anti-folk, a character…
What sort of animal are The B of the Bang, then? If début single “Alfred, Light the Fires” can be taken as representative of their output in general, I think we can file them safely in that wilfully eccentric branch of the UK indie sound that houses such disparate-sounding acts as British Sea Power, iLiKETRAiNS and The Strange Death of Liberal England, to name but a few.
That’s not to say The B of the Bang really sound like any of those three bands, but there’s a common aesthetic between them all. They’re all anti-rock, for a start – and I don’t mean they’re opposed to rock ideologically (though they might be, for all I know), but that they’re all making a conscious effort to eschew rock’s easy formulas and clichés for musical forms that owe as much to folk music as they do to guitar pop. “Alfred, Light the Fires” begins with gentle jazz hi-hats and a an off-beat figure from a clean guitar, which gets joined by what I think are mandolin and keys for an oom-pah pre-chorus break. Frontman Wit has a distinctly British voice – deep and sonorous with a certain public-school/received pronunciation style to it, a bit like the chap from Editors (but not as wild-eyed or powerful) – and delicate deployment of vocal harmonies over the restrained music enhances the artisan vibe, the sense of craftmanship that informs the tune.
I can’t fault The B of the Bang’s delivery at all, but nor can I really get particularly enthusiastic about “Alfred, Light the Fires”, because it just doesn’t flick my switches. It’s attractive, delicate and well made, with a sense of bucolic antiquity to its style – listening to it is like looking at a Hobbs landscape after scouring your eyes with the best of Damien Hirst and his brash contemporaries, perhaps. But I’d hang neither a Hobbs or a Hirst in my house; while I understand their merits, they’re just not what my eye enjoys.
Which says more negative things about my tastes than it does The B of the Bang, to be honest, and that’s as it should be. “Alfred, Light the Fires” deserves to be loved, but I just don’t have it in me.
Manchester City fans in particular will no doubt approach The B of the Bang with trepidation, as they share a name with a rather gaudy looking sculpture that sits rusting outside their stadium, ready to impale a hapless passer-by with its rather large precarious spikes. The sculpture’s future remains doubtful, as many consider it to be a human Shish kebab waiting to happen (one of its spikes has already dropped off); but what of the future of its namesake?
Well “Alfred Light the Fires” is their debut single, so it’s a little too early to make any bold predictions yet, but the signs aren’t good on this evidence. The vocals veer towards Broadway audition, too trained and self conscious. “Alfred Light the Fires” is part saloon music, part bluegrass, part Andrew Lloyd Webber, but no part endearing. They’ve tried to produce something different, so kudos for that, but it’s just all a little too jazz-hands and doesn’t actually have a strong enough song at its core.
The first b-side, an acoustic version of “Lung”, is just plain drab and in no way worthy of further mention. Second b-side, a remix of “Alaska”, is actually the most interesting track on the disc, mixer Hexa Decibelz doing a nice job of building on what is already their finest song by far, using moody bass sounds to add even greater atmosphere and climate.
Such a diverse array of sounds on this short a disc make it hard to evaluate The B of the Bang, as it’s hard to tell exactly how they want to sound. Based on what is crammed onto these three tracks though, you’d hope its “Alaska” that they return to. Ironically it’s the warmest place they’ve visited so far.
‘Alfred, Light The Fires’ is a sinister ballad of loss and homecoming, an unpredictable concoction of anti-folk, malice-laden vocals, psychedelic big top clown breakdowns and smatterings of B Movie horror soundtracks. The live b-side ‘Lung’ is, by comparison, a soothing tonic, a soulful acoustic recording that is still characterised by vocalist Wit’s sombre delivery. Nicely unsettling and unsettlingly nice.
B of the Bang’s lead singer, Wit, describes his band as a lo-fi, electronica tinged anti-folk cake with a gothic grunge icing. Topped with cherries. The last bit particularly makes it sound more interesting than it actually is unfortunately, a bit more of a quiet “pfffft” than an attention-grabbing explosion and certainly no analogy to the impressive stance of the Mancunian sculpture after which they might be named. Although that started to fall apart before it was even unveiled so not sure of the reference there really.
Although when they are not adding their names to the list of bands that think that a clever sense of drama can only be achieved by sticking a few minutes of waltz in the middle of a song, BOTB are actually quite good. Away from the theatrical drunken-ness of the EP’s title track, which showcases their troubadour attitude but not so much their strength of songwriting, live acoustic track, ‘Lung’, demonstrates that they perform as well in the altogether as on record, the sometimes dreary lead vocal, which puts me in mind of Franz Ferdinand in slow motion, contrasted by the friendly ghost backing singing and cute glockenspiel sounds and adding a bit of hope to proceedings. A remix of their track ‘Alaska’, (of which I wonder if anyone has heard the original version), also provides a good example of a decent rhythm and a good remix actually enhancing a band’s overall sound. Overall, a weird debut but something to go on and I wonder what the album release will sound like, due out in May 2009. Well, at least I’m wondering.
Anna C