Kitchen Cynics – Reekinhame
Les Enfants Du Paradiddle – Out Now
In reviewing this album I got sucked into a different world, a world of numerous releases by one band. Or rather, by one person. Alan Davidson‘s work under the name of The Kitchen Cynics is quite prolific, Reekinhame being his most recent and the 124th release on his own label Les Enfants Du Paradiddle. It comes gently out of the speakers, a low wall of stringed sound, a backdrop to his gentle voice, echoes of, The Incredible String Band, Ivor Cutler and Espers at their most genteel.
This is an album of songs recorded during the uncertainty of lockdown – or rather, lockdowns – and many of the tracks were recorded in a studio over an unused morgue, the knowledge of which may – or may not – enhance your listening pleasure. It might also explain the general themes of the album.
Much of the album features songs about people, small vignettes of incidents and accidents, little things that pop into our minds at one time or another but we rarely develop them into stories. The starting point here is The Fall of Dr Strang, a dark character in a dark cell accompanied by his rat-chewed Bible and his memories. He reflects on his life, his downfall possibly the fault of his ‘fondness for whiskey and for wine’ that led him to absolve the sins of those to whom he preached by taking their wives and daughters into his arms. Surely no modern reference here?
What I like is the sketchiness of the character, enough to build your own picture and yet enough for a strong narrative nature of the song. The Woman Who Talked to Crows is easy to draw in our head as this lament for the death of a ‘such a good friend who spoke their tongue’ unfolds. Now she is dust they will not talk with her again; sad but a strong image of connection with the living world. Such characters are real. In John and Joan – The Clown’s Courtship, there is humour in the continued need to entice the lover:
I have a mare, I ride on her tail to save her back
and my favourite line:
I have a cheese upon the shelf, I cannot eat it all myself
As you follow the track order, you appear to come closer and closer to the character of the singer. The pronouns shift to ‘I’ though the character becomes blurred, and the darkness does not go away. Whilst Feeding Fish ‘in the rock pool, got the urge to dive right in’ reflecting a feeling we have all had a one time, of jumping in and enjoying the ‘sparkly’ water with the other creatures. Quickly though, the impulse moves to one of diving right down and having the creatures watch as you drown. Though the sentiment is grim, the words, the rhymes, give a hint of lightness, a sort of nursery-rhyme vibe of jolly song built on horrific happenings.
In Horses, the singer sees the approaching beasts, ‘their hooves churning up the clay’ heralding his death, the carriages filled with his relatives, ‘as dead as dead as dead can be’. Despite their calls for him to join them, he opts to remain, to ‘stay alive now despite the grief and pain’. He knows his time will come, but not yet. Finally, The Whistling Fool knows that we leave ‘only echoes….only dust’.
I would not want you to go away and think that this is a morbid album. Far from it. The pictures are dark, but there is a gentle humour that pervades all the songs, and a lightness of touch that endears you to them straightaway. In many ways the musical accompaniment is a foil for the lyric, in some cases just a backdrop, in others a musical interpretation of the sentiment. But as a package, it works really, really well.
If you have not come across The Kitchen Cynics oeuvre at this point, then you can’t go wrong by jumping in here and then working your way back – but I would suggest you be smart about it as I am sure that there will be two or three additions to Alan Davidson’s catalogue before this year is out. Excellent.
Order via Bandcamp: https://kitchencynics.bandcamp.com/album/reekinhame