Some of BURNING HANK have been involved in the bubble and froth of the City of Leeds' Fermentation Decade since the beginning. Sometimes they must have felt it was all too much. The randomly determined successes and failures of the good, the bad and the unspeakable could, indeed, get anyone down.
But no. They have come up cheerful, laconic, amused and very amusing with a little gem of a début album. It’s an astute blend of eclectic sources. It sidesteps and pirouettes around any kind of genre ghetto. Lyrically and musically it plunders at will. Its self-aware, funny, poignant, melodically rich and instrumentally adroit. And here and there, just a bit silly too.
World-weariness and street-smartness can be taken as given. Subversive cliché appropriation comes as standard. Dry bons mots are plentiful.
It's the kind of record that people who love Half Man Half Biscuit and Jimmy Rogers will take to on first, or at least second hearing. It sounds nothing like either of those iconoclasts of course, but the combination of full strength adult intelligence and an off the wall approach to song writing stand out.
The best songs (Cake, Keep Digging, Birthday, Earthquake) are exceptionally good. The weakest ("Cat Has Got Your Tongue" maybe, and a couple of shorts, definitely) reveal early days of a voice still being found. A tour full of audiences will shake them loose and provoke more of the full length quality material. As a first album it more than holds its own.
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There are lots of favourite lines, but if you just want a taste, then "Its hard to use the right amount of syllables at minus ten but somehow they manage it in Sweden" will keep me happy for a while yet. Ditto "Another power lunch, another power trip: I'm so glad I got a degree". And let’s not forget "You’d rather walk than run, but you'd rather run than fight" a safety slogan for us all.
The band (household names in all their own households) are Al Catraz - acoustic guitar and vocals; Dooms Dave - vocals and ukulele; Dodge Bullitz - vocal and electric guitar (including s criminally funny solo on "Birthday"; The Scene - Bass; Flat Mint - drums; and Rachel McWHAT!? - violin. As far as I know, none of these people have honoured their parents' preferred name choices.
And finally, if you really need a genre, Alt. Skiffle should do for now.
http://burninghank.bandcamp.com
http://www.myspace.com/burninghank
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