Stick In The Wheel - Endurance Soundly Caged (From Here)

What Your Ears Say & The Cover Looks LIke

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What We Say

Midweek malaise? Get over it - this will help. I'm filing it under punk folk due to Stick In The Wheel's tradition informed yet  refreshing disregard for the genre's niceties and norms, intelligent arseiness, anarchic bent, club ready electronic dabbling & even a bit of autotune. They might be the only folk show with a mosh pit, I know I'd travel to see them live. See you at the front.

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What The Release Notes Say

Radical folk duo Stick In The Wheel announce a new special release for December 2022 - Endurance Soundly Caged. Limited edition transparent red vinyl, CD and digital.

Featuring fresh new arrangements of material spanning past releases, it was recorded live at the renowned Eastcote Studios, with Siân Monaghan on drums, George Hoyle on bass, along with Ian Carter’s trademark dobro and Nicola Kearey’s unmistakable voice.

Ian Carter: “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.”

Whereas Tonebeds for Poetry reflected their prolific studio experiments (and was #2 Guardian Contemporary AotY), Endurance Soundly Caged captures the intensity of the last two years’ live shows. The raw holler of Bedlam - recently featured in The Essex Serpent (AppleTV) - hardens through to a revitalized, heavier White Copper Alley’s sex-worker fable, drawing a line to a supercharged version of Villon Song, a 2020 favorite of both Iggy Pop and Marc Riley. Robot, taken from Tom Cox’s short story of the same name, is an all-new version of the menacing folk-horror saga that has mesmerised recent live audiences. An synth-led and autotuned As I Roved Out weaves a 10th Century charm into its other-worldly pastoral, whilst psychedelic Gold So Red conjures a final spell from one of the oldest surviving carols. The title is taken from a line in Bedlam, from the 1672 songbook “Pills to Purge Melancholy”.

The duo were asked by director-of-the-moment, and fan of the band, Clio Bernard, to perform music in The Essex Serpent, alongside Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes. It meant being part of the show as 1890s itinerant street musicians, Bedlam soundtracking the villagers’ fear and unease against a mysterious force.

The last two years saw SITW release studio album Hold Fast (2020), and 2021’s more abstract mixtape, Tonebeds for Poetry (#2 Guardian Contemporary AotY), as well as the collaborative project Perspectives on Tradition (2022 with Nabihah Iqbal, Olugbenga & Jon1st). Their relentless approach to questioning traditional music forms is matched only by the energy with which they play it.

CREDITS
All music composed by Ian Carter and Nicola Kearey except tracks 1, 2 and 6 trad arr Kearey/Carter
Robot words by Tom Cox, Villon Song words from the poem by WE Henley
Recorded by George Murphy at Eastcote Studios
Produced and mixed by Ian Carter
Co-produced by Nicola Kearey

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Catch Stick In The Wheel and other, albeit less Raucous Alt-Folk in the Slow Folk Playlist