On the 2nd of December, Stick in the Wheel return with Endurance Soundly Caged, featuring fresh new arrangements of past releases. As mentioned here on Folk Radio, Stick in the Wheel are fearless when it comes to following their own standards, and the results are rarely short of astonishing. That’s no more true than in a live setting, and it’s that intensity that this new release sets out to capture.
The album was recorded live at the renowned Eastcote Studios, with Siân Monaghan on drums, George Hoyle (Cunning Folk) on bass, along with Ian Carter’s trademark dobro and Nicola Kearey’s unmistakable voice.
Ian Carter says, “The energy of the live band we put together has such a real, vital connection – which only a few people got a chance to see live – so we decided to take them into Eastcote to get it down on tape.”
Among the tracks revisited on Endurance Soundly Caged is the fan favourite Bedlam…
This new album version is up there with their best, and there’s no denying the intense defiant energy that courses through the veins of this live take. It’s also our Song of the Day.
Gatekeepers are often able to hide in plain sight in folk; Stick In The Wheel make music that very deliberately breaks down those gates.
Thomas Blake, Folk Radio
With Hold Fast (2020), they married forgotten dialects to thoroughly modern recording techniques, sang about recent internet memes and brought a DIY punk ethos to 10th-century religious history. Reflecting their prolific studio experiments, Tonebeds For Poetry (2021) cast the net even wider with the album presented as a mixtape on which they recognise that the vernacular of the city and of contemporary urban musical forms is as valid a tradition as any of the more widely accepted varieties of folk music. Earlier this year, they dropped Perspectives On Tradition with Nabihah Iqbal, Olugbenga & Jon1st, much like Stick In The Wheel’s other work, that album “functions as a chapter in a manifesto for how folk music should be made and how tradition should be thought about…Kearey, Carter and their collaborators are fearless when it comes to following their own standards, the results are rarely short of astonishing.”
Some of you may have caught Stick in the Wheel on The Essex Serpent (Apple TV).
Director-of-the-moment, Clio Bernard, asked the duo to perform music in The Essex Serpent alongside Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes. They appeared as 1890s itinerant street musicians, soundtracking the villagers’ fear and unease against a mysterious force.
Nicola Kearey: “Clio is a fan of the band and playing Bedlam amongst the chaos of a rowdy Essex tavern made perfect sense.”
Endurance Soundly Caged is released on limited edition transparent red vinyl, limited CD & digital. Artwork is taken from the video for Gold So Red, shot in one take between the lockdowns of 2020.
PRE-ORDER/SAVE ENDURANCE SOUNDLY CAGED – https://stickinthewheel.lnk.to/EnduranceSoundlyCaged