Never anything less than uncompromising and challenging, Stick In The Wheel with another package of brutal honesty.

Release Date: 11th October 2024

Label: From Here

Format: CD / LP / digital

The thing is, right, we (in the royal sense) have some form with SITW. So much so that we (again, in the royal sense) can abbreviate the name without (hopefully) causing offence. The association over a handful of years on various web pages and our well meaning attempts at showing solidarity has continued onto the ATB pages – most recently the Endurance Soundly Caged album delighting our ears.

The form continues. Fellow ATB scribe Seuras has identified Nicola Kearey elsewhere as “a voice truly fit to follow in the tracks of Shirley Collins.” Praise indeed from someone who doesn’t hand out such accolades lightly. Having reviewed the debut album From Here on the more often than not, uncompromising web pages of Louder Than War (it earned a 9/10 in the days when some numerical value was required) good to see LTW still on the case with the new album. The “Cher on autotune” description might not quite sit as neatly as the Shirley Collins accolade. Stick with it though and read beyond the PR regurgitation, as it gets the Carlsberg “probably their best album yet” tagline.

Anyway… As we’ve played the waiting game of ‘see what the others think’ (they even made PROG magazine too! Sandwiched twixt The Tirith and Devin Townsend) we can confirm the promise of an album that serves up what they’ve termed a joyous lambasting of everyone and everything that’s wrong in the world. Unsurprisingly, the set is about as far away from pastoral folk music or parlour ballads as you can get. With typical wry wit and style, a beady eye is cast over those (no names mentioned) committing wrongs in plain sight, with Kearey narrating a series of what they’ve told us are tales of people f**king up, or being f**ked up. Prepare for encounters with a sackful of nefarious activities with an uncompromising and spiky SITW soundtrack that fluctuates as wildly as a an unpredictable encounter with Zappa.

Their recent past has seen them experimenting with soundscapes that veer wildly from the raw and rustic nature of their music making. Drones and electronics have weaved their way into he sonic pallet. Again, they provide the haunting ambience for both curtain raiser and closer; prologue and epilogue if you will.

The album itself reeks of London. Noth a shiny bright ‘The Apprentice’ London, but a murky Dickensian setting where Fagin and his gang would lie in wait for rich pickings. Just like a fairground hawker on a Victorian freak show, Back Of The Hatch sets the scene, I present to you several episodes, periods of time in which to think whatever you want.” Episodes are as weird and wonderful as the characters who inhabit Dylan’s Desolation Row or the exhibits in Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Karn Evil 9.

The title track follows the more expected SITW template. Tumbling metallic Dobro guitar, an urgent tempo (not the usual handclaps though – they’re soon back on Burnt Walk) and a sneeringly authentic vocal. Cut from the same ragged cloth is the singsong The Cramp and the ethnic vibe that add a degree of ominous threat to Cracks.

What Can The Matter Be is positively Gallic. Flourishes of Mediterranean inspiration are only missing a pair of two of castanets arriving on board some sailing vessel and cast into the Thames for the mudlarks to discover. It sits side by side by the nursery rhyme Hush given a similar wave of accompaniment and thump of percussion. As they say – “Nursery rhymes reimagined as death threats.” Lovely stuff – but the stuff of nightmares.

A nod to some heartfelt balladry comes with Lavender and Watercress-o that could be straight from Lionel Bart’s Oliver! where the vocal presents an unexpected and fragile tenderness. And then there’s a black humour which is typified by Can’t Stop where one unfortunate is “as dead as the car around him” and has lost his no claims bonus… Add a jaunty march and somehow the bleakness doesn’t seem quite so extreme.

From here – the title of their debut album and record label – is at the heart of everything they do. Embracing their roots, Stick In The Wheel continue to be refreshingly authentic and defiant.

Here’s the title track:

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