WITH a brace of cassettes, a couple of digital singles (2019’s “Dear Natalie” and this April’s Four Tracks) sandwiching a one-off 7″ for Nebraska’s Saddle Creek, “Enough Salt (For All Dogs)” of which there’s literally a handful left at Bandcamp, West Yorkshire’s Crake are stepping boldly forward and have signed for Fika Recordings, home to Tigercats, Darren Hayman, Emma Kupa, &c – and thus a lovely meeting of minds. Here’s to this for a partnership that should bring much musical joy.
If you’ve never come across Crake before, then we should briefly introduce a selection of sibilant musical seekers: Rowan Sandle, Russel Searle, Rob Slater and Sarah Statham. Rowan is, perhaps, the band’s visionary; she brings a fully fledged aesthetic of the pastoral and the psychogeographical, has brought songs to the Crake oeuvre concerning crinoids, slime mould and pussy willow – dipping into an older, wyrder England; and, if that name derives from where we imagine, the Margaret Atwood novel Oryx And Crake (which: read), thinks of a perhaps wilder, less anthropocentric future, too.
What might surprise you given what we’ve learnt so far is the warm, folk-rock hush of their aesthetic as displayed on “Lamb’s Tail”, their first outing for Fika; we’ve got the video for that down below. It’s got a transatlantic feel that’s part Fairport, part Edith Frost and others; and a natural, instinctive flow that indicates that Rowan and band live and breathe this. It’s no affectation. There’s a grace and a tranquillity at play; they’re at ease in this land.
She says: “When I was a kid and I was worried or anxious, I would leave it to the fates to tell me the outcome of whatever issue I was currently stuck on.
“I would ask my question to the ether and make up some rule to reveal to me my answer. For example, if whilst walking I land at a lamppost with my left foot, the answer is no, but if I land with my right, then yes.
“’Lamb’s Tail’ deals with a major question pertinent to me now – in my early thirties, without children but knowing I want them, I worry when. And at the opposite end of life’s flight, I’ve recently got to know grief. And it’s a lot.
“So sometimes we revert to silly rituals that comforted us as a child, noticing the pushing onwards of spring, or laughing at the fact that Rob once met a cat he could have sworn he taught drums to.”
Crake’s “Lamb’s Tail” is out via digital streaming platforms today.
Connect with Crake elsewhere online at Facebook, Bandcamp and Instagram.
No Comment