As a member of the amorphous entity known as the Shovel Dance Collective, Nick Granata is close to the middle of a lot of the best things that are currently happening in London’s vibrant experimental folk scene. A singer and multi-instrumentalist, Granata can frequently be seen on the stages of Camden or Dalston alongside his bandmates or supporting other luminaries like Milkweed or the Goblin Band. Given that Shovel Dance have been around for a good few years now, and given that Granata began writing some of the songs that appear here as far back as 2019, it’s something of a surprise that it’s taken this long for their debut solo album to appear.
That album is here now, and it’s called (deep breath) My Heart is Running Backwards! A Martial Artist! With a Closed Fist! Woof! Sometimes you can learn something from an album title. What we learn here is that Granata has a penchant for digressive flights of fancy, for the primacy of human feeling, for a certain absurd humour and for a serious kind of silliness that sprang from Dada and reared its head again in the work of Viv Stanshall. But Granata largely plays down the wackiness in favour of genuine sonic experimentation, something that’s in evidence from the album’s very first moments.
Adipocere!, the opening track, begins with Granata’s unaccompanied voice and is soon joined by a bracing scrape of noise that sounds at times like John Cale’s bits from the first Velvets’ album, isolated and roughed up a bit. The lyrics show a fertile imagination in full flow and touch on – amongst other things – a make-up routine from beyond the grave. Granata’s singing is impressive and startling throughout, often closer to someone like Alfred Deller than to any traditional folk singer.
Granata has an uncanny knack for creating a tension between experimental modes of performance and the unwritten rules of traditional forms. Part of this is due to their singing, which is always defined by its control, but often seems right on the edge of what is comfortable to the human ear. The results – opening lines of All and All Again, for example – are frequently thrilling. Another key to Granata’s success is their openness to the weird: goblin-like backing vocals, unexpected harmonic juxtapositions, frequent changes in pace. Certainly, they wield their unpredictability with great skill, but there is more to it than that. It is the inherently and joyously queer heart of these songs that really stands out.
They Came to Me One by One utilises a crunchy electric guitar and background drone to evoke a kind of industrial minimalism, while Granata glides in and out of a melodramatic falsetto. Rabbits! begins as a gentle piece of piano-based music hall, then morphs into a chorus of raucous call-and-response. Despite its surface frivolity (and its reference to Richard and Judy), it is a brilliantly paced song, flitting nimbly between the sombre and the stirring. Doggy! creates its drama through minimal acoustic strums and Granata’s powerful, rangy singing, and There is an Omelette that will Drive All Grief Away successfully yokes the mundane to the profound (and runs the gamut from subtleties to histrionics) in a way that would make Richard Dawson proud.
On the album’s closing track, the stunning Birdies!, Granata paints an intensely lyrical picture, while the strings break out from the shackles of minimalism and soar alongside the vocals. It gathers momentum and then drops away, allowing space for some of Granata’s most gentle and heartfelt singing, a perfectly judged conclusion to an ambitious album of astonishing breadth and endless personality.
My Heart is Running Backwards! A Martial Artist! With a Closed Fist! Woof! (July 24th, 2026) Double Dare