Record Reviews

Record Review: Alex Rex “The National Trust”

by
Alex Nielsen, aka "Alex Rex"
Alex Nielsen, aka “Alex Rex”

Alex Rex is the name used by Alex Neilsen, former leader of the psych-folk outfit Trembling Bells, for his solo work. This album was written after Rex had been working on restoring a wooden cabin in Carbeth, a hamlet in the countryside north of Glasgow. The cabin had been left to decay after the sudden death of his younger brother, Alastair, who it belonged to. Former estranged Trembling Bells bandmate Lavinia Blackwall came to help with the restoration, which aided a reconciliation. Blackwall then worked on the album, in addition to Trembling Bells guitarist Mike Hastings and long-time collaborators Marco Rea and Rory Haye.

How much you will like the music on the album depends very much on personal taste. It is prog-folk with some seventies rock thrown in and is not unlike Trembling Bells’ work with Bonnie Prince Billy on their 2012 collaboration “The Marble Downs”. It has none of the groove or swing of most of the music here on AUK; rather, it has the angular, start-stop and orchestral feel of prog-rock at times.

The folk influence shows itself on the hymnal ‘Lelo Sona’, which has church organ and echoes of Steeleye Span’s ‘Gaudete’ and on ‘The Tradgedy of Man’ with its fiddle. The seventies rock appears in the looping glam-rock riff on ‘Psychic Rome’ and a couple of tracks remind you of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. The album was recorded, like Rex’s other works, in a few takes, with no rehearsals. This works well to give it a raw, unpolished, feel which makes you sit up and take notice. It’s a bit like The Fall playing prog rock and Rex’s words also echo Mark E Smith’s uncompromising approach.

As with the music, how much you like the words will be personal taste. They have a slightly unhinged dark humour, a bit like Alex Harvey. This is shown on the rousing and memorable title track with lines like “I got Lyrical Ballads coming out my arse” and “And John Ruskin was disgusted by his own wife’s pubic hair/Men of genius are fucking nightmares”. On ‘Boss Morris’ Rex goes a bit Frankie Howerd with “I like football and Foucault/ I like poetry and porn/ I like classical allusions/ Like when rosy fingered dawn”

But they also have a rather angry and bleak flavour with a downbeat view of humanity. Rex says that he is a ”pale misanthrope”, “the best bastard I know” and that “I treat my friends with disdain and my enemies like roses/I cut ‘em down”. But he seems to be in distress. Lines such as ”I’m too seasick to man the ship/I’m worn out from the inside out” and “I’ve got two kinds of song/ Which one will it be?/One where I hate myself/ Or one where you hate me?” show his turmoil.

And there are no words to sweeten the pill. Whereas, for example, Patterson Hood can write of the dark side of life but also of the love that makes it worthwhile, Rex seems rather jaundiced about love here with words such as “No, it’s not love/ it’s a mental disorder” and “I knew the value of nothing/I fell in love with nothing”. There is also no obvious mention of his brother except perhaps in the words “Get it through your thick head/ He’s not coming back from the dead”, although the sadness in the album may reflect his grief.

Rex writes about the renovation of the cabin: “while songwriting brings to life orphaned parts of my personality, the cabin is a synthesis of all my interests – nurturing my emotional health instead of exploiting it. With that in mind, I think this will be my last album as Alex Rex.”

The album will divide opinion but is a worthwhile and engaging work of art which demands your attention.

Source: Alex Rex “The National Trust” – Americana UK

Record Review: Macdara Yeates’ “Traditional Singing from Dublin”

by

Possessed of a crystal-clear voice with echoes of the style of Luke Kelly and the emotional depth-charge of Liam Weldon, Yeates’s full-bodied singing is never anything but his own

By Siobhán Long

Raucous, bawdy, reflective and wistful in turn, Macdara Yeates’s solo debut is a robust collection in which this Dublin singer revisits age-old tales and renders them anew with his own unforced imprint.

As a founder member of the Cobblestone singing session The Night Before Larry Got Stretched (as well as being a member of Skippers Alley), Yeates has a well-established pedigree in singing circles, but unlike his peers in Lankum, Landless and Ye Vagabonds, along with his erstwhile bandmates John Francis Flynn and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, he’s taken his own sweet time to let the songs gestate.

Yeates is possessed of a crystal-clear voice that contains echoes of the declamatory style of Luke Kelly and the emotional depth-charge of Liam Weldon, yet his full-bodied singing is never anything but his own. Light on decoration, Yeates favours a bareboned setting for most of his chosen songs, with many sung solo, and those that invite his own accompaniment on bodhrán and guitar are adorned with only the subtlest backdrop, reminiscent of the buoyant touch beloved of the late Dennis Cahill.

Yeates delights as much in the nonsense of his own version of The Herrin’ as he does in the poignant emigration song The Shores of Lough Bran (learned from the Connemara singer Sarah Ghriallais) and Dominic Behan’s Our Last Hope. Yeates’s colour palette is richly hued, thanks to the welcoming gabháil of his song book, where borrowings from Frank Harte, Seosamh Ó hÉanaí, Luke Kelly, Séamus Ennis and others coalesce to form a highly cohesive whole.

In a golden age for traditional singing in Ireland, Yeates’s debut comes as a further welcome affirmation that the torch is being passed to a generation who truly understand and value its worth, while acknowledging that they are not afraid to inhabit it with their own particular voice. Traditional Singing from Dublin is a candid, clear-eyed and uncluttered snapshot from a singer who is finally stepping into the spotlight.

Source: Macdara Yeates: Traditional Singing from Dublin – Passing of the torch in city’s vocal tradition – The Irish Times

Record Review: “The Purple Bird” by Bonnie “Prince” Billy

by

The Purple Bird by Bonnie “Prince” Billy released in 2025. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.

Singer/songwriter Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, has had an infatuation with traditional country music for the entirety of his career, and its influence has grown more pronounced at different phases of his discography.

Though his enigmatic persona is always present in his songs, some of Oldham’s most engaging tunes are those where he’s tempered his strangeness with the warm familiarity of classic country underpinnings. In 2004, his Greatest Palace Music collection took this approach into overdrive, re-recording new versions of some of his early outsider Americana songs in full Nashville regalia, with crack session players transforming the songs into traditional country and/or Western arrangements. The Purple Bird represents Oldham taking another swing at the time-honored Nashville sound.

Album producer David Ferguson (a longtime collaborator of Oldham’s who has also worked with Johnny Cash, Sturgil Simpson, and many other big names of country) co-wrote many of the songs, assembled a band, and connected a host of talented guests to bring the sessions to life. Ferguson’s hand on the album is best felt in its most lively moments, like the joyous “The Water’s Fine” with its chicken-scratch guitar leads and grinning fiddle parts or the timeless honky tonk bumble of “Tonight with the Dogs I’m Sleeping,” a hilarious drunkard’s lament that sees its flailing protagonist literally sleeping in the doghouse after a long night out. However, ballads like the beautifully melancholic “Boise, Idaho” and album standout “One of These Days (I’m Gonna Spend the Whole Night with You)” are just as powerful if more refined, both with gentle soft-rock melodic sensibilities that merge with dreamy pedal steel, electric piano, or mandolin augmentation to create an almost tropical take on the traditional country slow dance.

Oldham is the sole writer on several songs, including “Guns Are for Cowards,” which uses a buoyant and celebratory oompah instrumental as the backdrop for lyrics about horrific gun violence, the understated “Sometimes It’s Hard to Breathe,” and the horn-heavy mellowness of “New Water.” These songs are great, but they feel more in keeping with the sound of recent work like 2023’s Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You. The Purple Bird shines the brightest in its most collaborative moments. It’s when the band is in full swing that Oldham sounds tuned-in and excited (even giddy) to be crafting the kind of classic country record that he’s enjoyed so much himself.

The depth of the production helps deliver this feeling, elevating the sound of The Purple Bird to a place where all of its carefully placed details and rusty joy can be clearly heard, and even more markedly felt.

Source: The Purple Bird – Bonnie “Prince” Billy | Album | AllMusic

Review: “Les Cousins” – The Soundtrack Of Soho’s Legendary Folk & Blues Club

by

By Dave Thompson

Les Cousins: The Soundtrack Of Soho’s Legendary Folk & Blues Club

Cherry Red (3-CD set)

Talk about the British folk scene of the 1960s and, sooner rather than later, the name Les Cousins will come up — no, not another of the unheard legends that bestrode that era like an arran-sweatered colossus (although there were plenty of those around at the time), but the venue wherein said colossi strutted their stuff.

2

An unprepossessing Greek Street restaurant, where the young Al Stewart shepherded the evening’s acts on and off the stage; where Sandy Denny and Paul Simon were as likely to appear as a toothless Irishman singing “Danny Boy”; where both the folk boom of the mid-1960s, and the variants that followed in its footsteps were born.

Les Cousins Club Continental opened in October 1964, in a space that once had held the Skiffle Cellar. A failure in that form, it reopened, sans the last two words, in April 1965, with a solid diet of folk music, and remained in action for the next seven years. During which time, more or less every British (and many American) folk artist of note either played there, or at least stopped by.

This box set — amazingly, the first to truly focus upon Les Cousins alone, as opposed to the overall scene of the day — merely scratches the surface of the club’s renown. Three discs of (many of) the venue’s best known guests could probably be followed by 30 stuffed with lesser known talents, and 300 of complete unknowns. If only anyone had recorded their performances…

Unfortunately, if there are any unknown live-at-Les Cousins tapes circulating… well, they’re still unknown. The 71 tracks spread across three discs here are universally taken from studio albums, although so many of them are hard (if not impossible) to find these days that that is nothing to sniff at.

Neither is the roll call of talents. Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny, Al Stewart, the Young Tradition, the Incredible String Band, Donovan, Julie Felix, Wizz Jones, the Third Ear Band, Plainsong, Bridget St John… Anne Briggs, who is due for the super deluxe treatment later this year, shares space with the immortal Nadia Cattouse; Hamish Imlach with Mudge & Clutterbuck; Paul Simon with Shirley Collins. And while the song selection is not as adventurous as some browsers might demand, it is certainly representative of the artists involved.

Of course, for a true impression of what a night at Les Cousins might have sounded like, the BBC would need to uncork the long mothballed London Folk Club Cellar tapes, the corporation’s own approximation of a venue such as this in the mid-late 1960s. A taste of that is, in fact, on tap in a forthcoming Martin Carthy BBC sessions box set, and we can only hope that more is in the pipeline, while anyone who actually remembers the show is still around to appreciate it.

In the meantime, however, let Les Cousins be your guide to a unique period in British folk, and the unique venue that catered for its admirers.

 

Dave Thompson is a contributing editor at Goldmine, contributing the Spin Cycle vinyl and reissues column and more besides. A much published author, his latest book An Evolving Tradition: The Child Ballads in Modern Folk and Rock was released in July 2023. He has co-written autobiographies by Eddie and Brian Holland, New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain and Walter Lure of Johnny Thunder’s Heartbreakers. His memoir The Grunge Diaries is in the Goldmine Store.