You’ve heard of normal in Norwich, Helen & The Neighbourhood Dogs are infamous in Ipswich and ready to take on, if not the world, certainly greater fenland!

EAST ANGLICANA

Unless you have been to the excellent Maverick Festival, or to scattered East Anglian fêtes and jamborees, the chances you won’t be familiar with these charming reprobates. That will have been your loss, but there is no longer any excuse, with this short LP/long EP. East Anglicana is their avowed stock in trade, amiable straw chewing music with a country tinge, majoring on melody.

These days almost more a collective than any more structured a format, there is a hard core of musicians who can be called upon to sing and strum, bringing guitars, banjo, fiddle, flute and keys to the party. And there is actually a Helen, too. Author/blogger and sometime Maverick stage manager, Shane Kirk will be embarrassed to be described as the brains behind the operation, but there, I’ve said it, with he and Helen Mulley writing the bulk of the material.

DELIBERATE, COGITATE & DIGEST

If Mulley is the official voice of the band, it is actually other voices that we hear first, for the ridiculously catchy Easy Money, a paean to the pitfalls of thinking it ever is. The song is written by Tony Winn, who, whilst generally deigning the limelight, can turn his hand to both banjo and accordion and often does. He takes the first verse and, Stephen Constable, one of the guitarists, the second.

The band famously don’t do lyric sheets, even as you press the applicable button on Bandcamp, and this is for a reason. They want you to listen and ingest them aurally, so as to allow the necessary deliberation, cogitation and digestion conventionally. The song is a cracking little number that rattles and rolls along on meshed string picking. Winn and Constable have just the right lack of polish for the tale, the sweetness then as Mulley debuts her vocal, for a contrasting stanza, providing the variety. An acapella burst or two from all adds further joy. The keys of new boy, Stephen Turnbull add a glossy backdrop, as well as a nifty solo, the addition to the overall sound a distinct pleasure.

ANGST VELCRO

A song about elephants and entitled Elephant always begs the question, and the room for this one is, or was, a family wedding. Think Oysterband’s Blood Wedding and think again. Mulley has one of those aching English voices that attract angst like velcro, and her delivery here is exemplary, over a backdrop of Winn’s banjo and more of those lustrous keys. There is also some glistening bouzouki, from Kirk, in the well balanced mix, where all the necessary parts are equally identifiable. The bass of Richard Hammond, probably not that one, is always on point, if never shouting about it. A shimmer of keys washes over the guitar and banjo interplay of I’m Not That Kind Of Girl, and I’ve clocked it, it is Linda Thompson I am hearing in Mulley’s vocal.

Snug Song applies a gentle whack of admonishment to an individual we can all recognise, as well observed a piece of pass agg as you could find, with a fiddle, Richard Lockwood, wafting airlessly through the barbs. A thoughtful song, you may need to play it a couple of times. Next up, it is the percussion of, and I’m guessing, Sam Thurlow, that leaps out for The Misfits; a soubriquet of Bongoboy would suggest it he, anyway. Turnbull’s piano offers equivalently rhythmic counterpoint, and these songs are lodging themselves in for a long haul. Harmonica appears for a middle eight of delight, before a Hammond consumes it, and all is well in the world, or Ipswich, as the Dogs would have it.

UNRUSHED & UNSULLIED

Kirk describes The Wave as a song that took the long route into fruition, and burns slowly in on a wash of conjoined accordion and organ. Unrushed and unsullied by any great haste it is a magisterial anthem that has echoes now of Sheryl Crow, at her beseeching best, seeping into Mulley’s voice, breaking as she ekes out the painful words. My notes simply say oof…… Near impossible to top, or even just to follow, Where Are They Now doesn’t try, straying otherwise into the feelgood of a sepia memory, a lope through half-remembered melodies and formats. If the banjo part were on a guitar you’d get one of those melodies an instant. It makes a more than decent bookend to this short but perfectly formed set, a thoroughly jolly a way of spending a repeating half an hour of your summer.

They don’t really do vids, but here’s another way to taste:

Helen & The Neighbourhood Dogs: Website

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