King Creosote is the brain and soulchild of Fife, Scotland’s Kenny Anderson, one of the driving forces in what’s known as the Fence Collective. What amounts to a manifesto can be found on their web site (http://www.fencerecords.com), if one feels some background knowledge would be helpful in understanding and appreciating the sound that is King Creosote.
Kenny And Beth’s Musical Boat Rides plays like a drunken cousin to the Kings Of Convenience remix CD Versus.
Acoustic and rural at heart, but dirtied-up by piles of spooky loopiness (see “So Forlorn”) and the low-tech buzz of home-recording (as on “Counseling”) much of the time,
But, like all good coffeehouse tunesmithing, there is a strong idea at the center of every track, composition being one area King Creosote avoids subjecting to radical experimentation.
Through the myriad of styles on this release, an overall sound emerges that is definitely alpha-hip (in an f*ck-you sort of way) and actually quite lovely at times (not always the quality most associated with underground ‘movements’).
Most of the songs stay centered on relationships and feelings,
Reels of drunken escapades or diatribes about matters political are avoided.
The opening sounds of “Lonepigeon’s Wineglass Finale” immediately brought back memories of the Future Pilot AKA release of a few years back (which, I was surprised to learn upon referencing the cd when I remembered that they were fellow Scotsmen, is also a Domino Records release). On the craftier side, “Space” manages to be a homebrew version of (Andy) Partridge pop.
A few tracks, like “Spokes” and “Lavender Moon”, are less involved with studio tomfoolery and all the more effective for it, allowing a Nick Drake-like plaintiveness (doesn’t Nick have a song called “Pink Moon”?)to arise.
“Harper’s Dough”, in particular, with it’s repeated harmony refrain of ‘you’ve got to rise above the gutter you are inside’ (almost Lennon-esque in it’s power) has a stop-you-in-your-tracks immediacy to it that benefits most from the lack of knob-twiddling.
Kenny and Beth’s Musical Boat Rides is comprised of tracks previously available only as singles or on cd-r’, some almost a decade old, which makes this a compilation rather than a proper release. And though it’s as cohesive as much of the non-clear channel music out there, some may find it too hypnotic to be folk or too acoustic to be experimental for this reason.
But it’s a good introduction to the both the band AND collective, and the easiest access to the music (on Domino) before one decides to go underground to sample more of King Creosote’s prolific output (as fence records proudly states, “KC is still unknown outside of his small coastal village”).
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