ARM18
Released: Monday 6th December 2010
CD / DL

Sailing gleefully under the radar and occupying his own trans-century time-period, Thirty Pounds Of Bone is one man, multi- instrumentalist Johny Lamb with a treasure-chest of storm-tossed laments and lullaby wig-outs to bedazzle.

Armellodie Records is proud to present Method; an album that seeks to explore the folksinger’s contradictory status as an outsider, often recording and touring alone, a situation seemingly at odds with folk’s suggestion of community. The result is a record fraught with geographic dissatisfaction, heartbreak, ghosts, isolation and drunkenness. Sitting uncomfortably somewhere between auto-biography and allegory the songs take in real life events and fantastical narrative concerning relationships, the dangers of being eaten by the dead and the difficulties of communicating when at sea.

The son of an ordained clergyman, Johny Lamb was initially raised on the Shetland island of Unst; he’s always been fascinated with the sea and the fisheries. His favourite books are Moby Dick and The Tin Drum. As a child he was once in hospital for so long that they made him go to school there, and as a result he now only has one functioning kidney. He has lived all over the British Isles, and has toured extensively throughout Europe. His life revolves around folk music and he believes strongly in innovation and change in traditional music rather than preservation of repertoire, as “a museum piece cannot be a ‘living’ tradition.”

The songs on Method engage in the folksong’s relationships to place, love, drink and localised mythology. From the opening pulsating rhythm of Crack Shandy In The Harbour, an absolutely true account of a time spent in Plymouth working for a racist café owner where narcotics anonymous had their meetings - 'Crack Shandy' was the family argot for heroin and crack smoked together – to the banjo-led How We Applaud The Unhappiness Of The Songwriter, which quite rightfully pokes fun at the peculiar exchange of the soul-bearer and the audience - “What can I sing? What tunes with poems in? And then take a bow for loving no one now”.

A melting pot of traditional influences is apparent and on All For Me Grogg, Lamb re-interprets a traditional forecastle song made famous by the Clancy Brothers amongst others, in this guise however it owes more to the dreaminess of Sparklehorse and the intimacy of Will Oldham.

Terrifically organic and intricately layered songs like The Fishery and Island’s Ode To Itinerant conjure themes of loneliness and geographic isolation with startling effect, the former with reference to the cod-fisheries of the 19th century explodes with face melting polyphonic harmonics and Spiritualized-esque distortion, the latter more delicately with a mournful cornet refrain accompanying a tale of leaving behind one’s past.

Lamb’s admiration of the ladies and partiality to the drink couldn’t be better eulogised than on A Lesson In Talking, a rousing accordion jaunt that amuses to no end with a proverbial tale; man meets whisky, man loves whisky, woman leaves man because of whisky, man learns lesson and tries to convince woman everything will be fine if she drinks as much whisky as he does. It’s a theme that surfaces once more on Darling with noble declarations of intent to do things properly “this time”, which of course doesn’t happen and the whole hideous cycle repeats until we expire with waves of distorted drunkenness.

Elsewhere Lamb takes us on a trip to the wilds of the Irish grasslands on Ghosts in the Grass, recounts the penitence at the bottom of the bottle on Crutches, and on the plaintive and beautiful kiss-off, Where I Used To Live, Lamb’s tender vocal resonates a story of a man leaving home for somewhere he hates and thus retreats into a delusional imaginary landscape excluding the wretchedness of his real life. There he meets a wonderful girl but in doing so has to reckon with his, her, and the land’s status as hallucination.

Method is Thirty Pounds of Bone’s second album. The first was cast onto our shores in 2006, the bold, innovative and beautiful, Homesick Children of Migrant Mothers. Met with great critical acclaim from the national press, Lamb has since spent his years travelling, playing, collaborating with other musicians and reading the works of James Herriot almost every day and once managed to get J Mascis to concede that All Creatures Great and Small was indeed, “pretty cool”. With the exception of a small collection of traditional and original sea shanties that appeared on Berlin-based label Woodland Recordings, Method is the first new material from Thirty Pounds Of Bone in almost half a decade.

Thirty Pounds of Bone draws equally from British and Irish traditional music and popular culture resulting in a sound at once as fascinated by distortion as it is by traditional instruments, seemingly appropriate to Lamb’s distain for the sterility of the studio, Method was recorded in four days in a bedroom in Harbertonford, South Devon. Johny Lamb plays all of the instruments on these recordings. For now he lives and writes by himself in a static van on the Lizard peninsular in West Cornwall. He can often be found in or on the sea. Although he is frequently accused of being unapproachable after performances if you do ever cross his path, make it a double.

THIRTY POUNDS OF BONE - Where I Used To Live

Thirty Pounds of Bone sings Chris T-T on an EP of cover versions released on Woodland Recordings. Songs by The Electric Soft Parade, Mary Hampton, The Great Park, Something Beginning With L, Le Reno Amps and Dive Dive also feature on this beautifully quiet and affectionate collection.
Available on limited CD at http://www.woodlandrecordings.com/RELEASES/WR046.html
More from Thirty Ponds of Bone at http://www.thirtypoundsofbone.bandcamp.com

WR046 - Thirty Pounds of Bone 'Ankles (Chris T-T)'

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THIRTY POUNDS OF BONE - Where I Used To Live

Armellodie

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