Been sat on this for ages like an absolute fuckstand, but it’s a grower. Or perhaps a seeper, in the sense of the dreadful mould problem in Brighton, or the inexorable vortex of death. That kind of deal.
You’re probably not familiar with Sam Cutting, but if you are it’s either as the kind of singer-songwriter that doesn’t have you screaming for Cixous to come back and execrate him, excoriatingly, or as a quarter of the Emperors Of Ice Cream (who may or may not require a definite article). Stylistically you might be forgiven for throwing the usual singer-songwriter shapes in his direction, but there’s something of the askance but never quite insouciant approach to songwriting of, say, Louden Wainwright III at his seriousest or your man from I Am Kloot. Or, like, little Lenny Cohen [surely high water mark, right?]. Which is to say, not only not shit, but actively actually being really quite good.
I have the problem of course that, writerly deficiencies aside, my stock and trade is usually on describing recording nuance and structures; and this is singer-songwriter territory. Karl MV Waugh (also of Emperors of Ice Cream, Zero Map, Binnsclagg etc) has done a remarkable job on “treatment” (I guess meaning recordist / engineer etc), but there’s only so much you can do with one man and a guitar until you have to ask whether that man actually can turn a phrase. “Pretty soon / someone’s going to shoot the elephant in the room”. Luckily, Cutting’s well adept with a turn of phrase, as if he’s actually paid attention where a bunch of singer-songwriters just want to bore on about their boring boreness. There’s a degree of what you might describe as hamminess here — I’m reaching for comparisons to Kan Mikami or Shuji Inabi. Those comparisons aren’t by any means critical — what I’m reminded of is both singers’ capacities to move me without (or perhaps because of) not understanding the lyrics. I suspect that’s where Waugh’s throttled treatment, dramatically overdriven rendering of “Number To Ring” makes sense. There is a degree of dynamics and theatricality to Cutting’s delivery and playing that make it a cut above a lot of singer-songwriters — I should say in the same breath that also-Brighton’s Me With Others (also Plurals) is phenomenal in the guy-with-guitar space.And we have one of those god-hecking-damned feelings to this record where it feels like a narrative although there’s not. Probably-best-track “You Can’t Sleep Here”, with its four-in-the-morning [eh?] vibe of knocked mics and neurotic not-sure-if-psycho vibes, half un-enunciated phrases and “There’s a dangerous individual around / you can’t sleep here” is simply just quite, quite lovely.
I mean really this is all sorts of just a record you could listen to on Bandcamp and you god-shitting-heck well should.
-Kev Nickells-
