Stick in the Wheel – This And The Memory Of This
From Here Records – 23 November 2018
There is something refreshing about Stick in the Wheel. I don’t mean “oh that’s bright and uplifting” though. What I mean is that they produce songs that are individual works of art in their own right. Yes, there are some common factors, as you might expect from any band, particularly, in this case, the vocals of Nicola Kearney, but each song, each tune, each production is separate and can sound singularly different from the others. This can be a difficult thing to balance. You don’t necessarily want to produce an album whose component songs are so different from each other that there is no signature ‘sound’, no group identity at all. But at the same time, you do want variety on all levels and not with a sense of the token ‘odd’ one thrown in.
Why have I gone off on one, as my daughter might say? Well, Stick in the Wheel’s new collection, This and the Memory of This has set me thinking about what is it that makes or rather gives a band, or even an individual, a particular sound – especially when the sound may vary considerably from track to track. And I suppose, to answer my own question, it is because that ‘sound’ has lots of facets, lots of things that give it a feel, a sensation without resorting to the same chords or the same riffs. With Stick in the Wheel, I believe it is because they start with a picture in their head and build it up with a palette of what is needed, not what just happens to be in the standard paintbox.
For this album, this mixtape, that palette includes singing through an auto-tune pedal (a live recording of Follow Them True), recording on to a phone because you’re at home ill (Watercress-o) or collaborating with other artists – Anna Roberts-Gevalt, Jack Sharp and Lisa Knapp. It is a mixtape and not an album in the sense that they had not trotted off to the studio to record a set of tunes. This is made up of songs from various places and times, songs that eventually have found a home here.
The tone is set with a version of Cruel Ship’s Captain, a bleak tale (aren’t they all?) of the killing of a young recruit told by the cruel captain as he awaits the death penalty, sang against a backdrop that builds the tension and the bleakness. This essential element of the backdrop is so important to a Stick in the Wheel song. Sometimes used as a contrast, at others used as a compliment, at all times so well put together. This also gives surprises such as Jolly Bold Robber, as standard a folk song as you would hear and then a bit later The Memory of This, an improvised piece from some time ago, the aural elements of a dream-like state, that liminal place where we might be asleep or awake.
A similar territory is explored with In The Morning which may be a deliberate homage to Laurie Anderson but it has its own life, channelled by Anna Roberts-Gevalt of American duo Anna and Elizabeth. Gentle, at times bucolic, sad, but always that edge. There are fragments of stories in the air, they are brought to earth and passed on as they meld with the rhythm of the new day.
Not convinced? Then listen to the summer solstice sun salutation of Lemady Rise (featuring Jack Sharp) with its infectious rhythm and processional advance which, on passing, blends into The Over, where all things come together – folk, dub and buckets of atmosphere and the vocals of Lisa Knapp. From there we roll over into As I Roved Out but in a drum and bass remix by Om Unit.
So, in my search for that reason for their particular ‘sound’, the actual things you hear are so varied. But, across this selection, you have a gallery of emotional contact where the dark edges of life, the shadows and the just glimpsed, play on our aural emotions. Never expect, never presume. Stick In The Wheel have, and continue to explore those limits, which may be further than you at first thought.