Erland & The Carnival - Nightingale

 A year after releasing their acclaimed debut long-player, England’s psych-folksters Erland & The Carnival are back with their sophomore release, which shows a natural progression to their sound. The first notable thing about Nightingale, which was recorded deep in the bowels of a ship moored on London’s River Thames, is that it is noticeably darker than their self-titled first effort.

As before, the lyrics are inspired by and taken from all manner of places. One of the oldest poems in written form, Dream Of The Rood, was the source material for the track of the same name, while WeAllDie takes its inspiration from the Egyptian Book Of The Dead and the lyrics to Emmeline draw from AA Milne’s poem Before Tea and Alice In Wonderland. The clever way that E&TC take the old and reshape it to create something new is intriguing, and makes for a listen that is beautiful, strange and pleasingly jarring.

While the record is darker than anything that E&TC have given us before, it is also poppier. For instance, Map of an Englishman, a song inspired by Grayson Perry’s work of the same name, is so catchy that it has got ‘single’ written all over it. Meanwhile, The Coral-like I’m Not Really Here mixes downbeat lyrics with a perky melody, as does opener So Tired in the Morning. “The saddest thing in life is to love and not be loved,” sings frontman Erland Cooper.

The atmospheric Nightingale is a fine return then, and further proves that Erland & The Carnival are one of the most interesting and creative bands around at the moment.

The Coral - Butterfly House

The release of a greatest hits album is often the swan song for bands. So when The Coral brought out their singles collection around the same time that founder member and guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones quit two years ago, you would have been forgiven for thinking that was the last you’d hear from them. Happily though, nearly a decade after their first release and three years since their latest studio offering, the Liverpudlians are back.

Produced by John Leckie (Radiohead, The Stone Roses), Butterfly House is the sound of a band that has matured. There are a few trademark woozy psych-fests here, like North Parade which, after initially sounding like it’s going to burst into A Hard Day’s Night actually ends up being more like Erland & The Carnival, but generally the tone of this sixth album is much more tender. While, with this shift in tone, their very 60s-influenced psychedelic folk may have lost a little of its appealing impishness and weirdness, trying to reprise the sounds they were making when they were kids would have felt false. Okay, so there’s nothing as instantly thrilling and barmy as the likes of Dreaming Of You, but, then, The Coral are older and wiser now.

There might not be anything hugely attention-grabbing here, but Butterfly House is delightfully genial in its sentiment and, more so than anything, it proves that, while their peers steadily fall by the wayside, there is life left in The Coral yet. Their ear for a lovely, perky melody remains as strong as ever.

Erland and The Carnival - Erland and The Carnival

Singer/guitarist Erland Cooper, The Good The Bad & The Queen’s Simon Tong and drummer David Nock from Paul McCartney’s The Fireman make up this heralded new offering from the UK.

Deriving their name from Jackson C Frank’s song, My Name is Carnival - a cover of which appears on the album - the trio play catchy, psych-freak folk with a mix of romantic and unsettling subject-matter. Lyrics and music are gleaned from bits and pieces of existing poetry and songs. Words from the likes of William Blake and Leonard Cohen are used and reworked, while Derby Ram takes from newspaper cuttings in its true story of teenager who - coaxed and filmed on camera-phones by a crowd below - jumped from the top story of a car park in an English town.

Britain has a rich tradition of bands that make slightly odd yet irrepressibly jaunty psychedelic folk music, and there are reference points aplenty here. Love Is a Killing Thing opens with the pots-and-pans instrumentation of Mystery Jets, You Don’t Have To Be Lonely has a Jim Noir-esque chorus, the aforementioned Derby Ram has a Super Furry Animals electo outro and there’s barely a song on the album that doesn’t sound a bit like The Coral. There are a few nice pace changes too, like the hushed Disturbed This Morning, with Cohen’s poetry given a pretty backdrop of acoustic guitars and horns.

Quintessentially English in its sound, Erland and The Carnival is a weird and wonderful treat, and potentially one of the best debuts from a UK band this year.