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7 out of 10
What do you want from your 'folk' music? A bit of relaxation? A nice bit of nostalgia? A brain-jarring voyage to trip-out city? Fredrick Stanley Star will give you all of these, often in the same track. Hailing from Loughborough, based in Cardiff and, perhaps, feeding off the Zygotic Myncis remaining in the atmosphere, the band manage to thread together a strangely windswept brand of acoustic nonsense. Reminiscent of Richard Thompson-era Fairport (500 Years), British Sea Power inserting a dreadnought up Billy Childish (Devil's Home) and Syd Barrett crooning on a cliff whilst strapped into a rocking chair (Broad Chinese Man), there is much to enjoy, if you're not frightened off by the band openly declaring their music to be 'progressive shanty' and the use of wooden spoons as percussion.
The album hits one like the sight of a ghost ship on a rocky coastline at night, revisiting the place where it sank with all hands, save for a baby tossed into the waves in its basket and saved miraculously by the bravery of the local publican's Irish wolfhound swimming through the froth and gale to drag the basket ashore. The shouty bits are a little galling and there's too much whistling in the final track but broadly, a debut success, I'd say. Like finding Val Doonican off his face in a barrel of ginger wine, singing songs about goblins.
Listen: www.myspace.com/fredrickstanleystarmusic
Tracklist:
1. 500 Years
2. Gift
3. Finger Tales
4. Palace
5. Devil's Home
6. Broad Chinese Man
7. The Dress Drool Sky
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