For the premiere issue of Unlikely Stories: Episode IV we are very proud to present zydeco-folk-rock from Scarborough, England!
No, seriously. You didn't know about the zydeco scene in Scarborough, England?
We couldn't find Scarborough on a Google map. We do, however, try to find great versified storytelling. We like polished tales of raw emotion and sophisticated lines of simple passions. And with the Buffalo Skinners, we're in luck.
In their debut album, The Buffalo Skinners, the Skinners mesh and layer a complex pastiche of sounds that could be immediately mistaken for American in origin—here, you'll hear Texan foot-stomping, Louisianan enthusiasm, and a framework of Los Angeles-style contemporary folk. The themes are big, and it's easy to imagine this band under a big Oklahoman sky, playing to the cattle in a tongue-in-something retro-video—even before you consider the band's delightfully absurd name. Their slow songs are sweet, their fast songs are fun, and I could think of a dozen great Dixie music venues where they'd fit in perfectly.
But although folk music often aspires to be "simple but not simplistic," it is not simplicity that is its cornerstone, but rather sincerity. And this is where, on careful listening, the Buffalo Skinners' peculiar origins merit consideration. Greyhounds buses and West Virginian country roads, after all, appear in songs only as symbols—familiar ones to a poor Southern boy, perhaps, but ultimately no more related to a song's meaning than is the description of a rose. Consider this lyric from the song "Seventh Street:"
"Lord, the Union is falling down
Lord, the Union is falling down
There's no union around in this Union town
I'm going back to Seventh Street"
We all know exactly what that means, and we know it has nothing to do with Reconstruction—era migration. It stems directly from the songwriters' experience, using the tall tales and big stories of America's past as a deliberately-thin metaphor that yields immediately to emotional truth. By using such a historical reference, "Seventh Street" makes explicit what is implicit in the album: Story-songs belong to everyone and they belong everywhere. They are about universal experience. When a song uses images meaningfully and accurately, the truth is recognizable, whether the song is about today's Mississippi, Huck's Mississippi, or some fictional desert on Mars.
And let me tell you, this Georgia boy recognizes the truth in the Buffalo Skinners' Dixie far better than he recognizes Alan Jackson's warblings about his hoochie-coochie.
The Buffalo Skinners are a English band in the vein of folk-rock, strongly flavored with a peppery zydeco. Member Robin Fisher has released a solo project, two years in the making, called Cats of Ashes. He's released it under the nomme de tune Salvage My Dreams. Do not be fooled by those words, "solo project," though: Cats of Ashes is not some stripped-down album that could be laid down by any backup band. It's a wonderfully odd little set, and you have the privilege of letting it reside between your wonderfully discerning ears, my delightful readers.
The tracks start off with an ethereal sort of bitterness that never quite departs; it's a young kind of longing that starts with spoken word and static, moves into jangly but melancholy guitars ("Your Runaway Clothes"), and moves into the more uptempo with perhaps my favorite track, "The Endless Trail of the Stray Dog's Tale." "Stray" is the ever evolving tale of your dad telling you about your dead dog, from "he's on a farm, son," to "I lost him, I'm sure he'll do fine, he's got piss and vinegar." After this cheerfully-paced song, the more quiet cynicism shines through in a kind of falling action.
While the greater part of the album's instrumentation is guitar-and-drum-driven, some tracks shine through with an eerie brightness. "120 Roll," for instance, features very bright, modulated beeps and a solid, uncomplicated drumline and plays over it such dark lyrics as "the insects were lucky to have nothing but their cruel twisted fate." The last entry on Ashes is a spoken word recording of a little boy speaking of forming a band, which is as strange a choice as you think it is. (Perhaps it is a young Robert?)
Ashes certainly isn't something you'd pop in to jam to, but it certainly hits the spot when you are feeling contemplative and somewhere between low-spirited and lachrymose. The whole set is imbued with a brand of wistful, ephemeral distaste for things-as-they-are, and makes no apology for it.
The Buffalo Skinners are a group of five songwriters (Lawrence Menard, James Nicholls, Peter Seccombe, Robbie Thompson and Robin Fisher) who met in Scarborough, England. The band started out in 2010 playing on the high streets of their seaside town for tips and recording music into the early hours of the morning. Summer 2010 brought the band to Southern California, the home of their accordionist, to play the streets and venues of Los Angeles county and record their first songs as the California State EP. The band returned to England, and 2011 saw the release of their self-titled debut album, recorded to a 70's tape machine in a suburban Manchester living room. The car was packed and the band hit the road for almost four months, playing the streets and venues of Edinburgh, Scotland down to the South coast of England and back, selling close to 2500 copies of their 14-track album. Now in 2012, The Buffalo Skinners have returned to Southern California to continue to promote their album in the US and work on new numbers for future releases.
So download these delicious tracks from The Buffalo Skinners:
Then buy the rest of it at thebuffaloskinners.bandcamp.com, or groove on the intense tracks by Robin Fisher as Salvage My Dream at salvagemydream.bandcamp.com!
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