Sparrow & The Workshop – Into The Wild

This mini-LP’s out this week, and it’s a little cracker, too. Opener ‘You’ve Got It All’ starts off with the gentlest of strums, some delicious ticklish harmonies before exploding into the sort of quietly towering Fairport Convention-isms we’ve come to love from them, with Jill O’Sullivan’s shivering vocal straight of 1960s California (despite being from Chicago), and the faintly martial racket from the rest of the band. It was a bloody close call to record of the week (although Jail Weddings just nick it), but this should be on your shelf right now, and no mistake. Quietly stirring stuff.

Beans On Toast – Standing On A Chair

Despite being right up there with the stupidest names of all time, it makes a certain kind of sense – you know,for example, you’re not getting a Muse record here. It’s refreshingly honest, straightforward stuff, more often than not just the plain-spoken (VERY London) singer and a couple of instruments, ranting in song about whatever’s hacking him off about the world at that moment. This 50-track (FIFTY!) double CD is a collection of all the stuff that’s been put out to date, and is actually a proper hoot from start to end. Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett produced it, plus there’s drop-ins from Emmy The Great, Frank Turner, some of The Holloways and so forth, which give you an idea, but it’s no vanity project. Despite the lo-fi strumming, it’s a riot of wit, righteous anger and nonsense. Amid songs that daydream about marrying Emmy The Great, that ponder a US government featuring Mr.T as Vice-President, or that worry about fancying a sixteen-year-old Laura Marling (“if only I was ten years younger and I wasn’t going bald”), the bulk of it is incadescent with rage at almost everything in the world that’s shit – George Bush, obesity, Apple computers, the smoking ban, and the price of rice. If you’ve ever thought how much fun it would be to mate Derek & Clive and Billy Bragg, it’s your lucky day – it’s brilliant, it’ll make you laugh out loud, and (best of all) it’s absolutely fucking spot-on.

The List Of Stuff We’d Have A Shifty At In Record Shops This Week:

Beans On Toast – Standing On A Chair
Beat The Radar – To The City From The Sea
Eugene And The Lizards – Glue
Jail Weddings – Inconvenient Dreams
Jesca Hoop – Hunting My Dress
Mark E Smith And Ed Blaney – The Train Part Three
Memory Tapes – Seek Magic
Mr James Bright – Big Sounds From Small Spaces
Pants Yell! – Received Pronunciation
Pomegranates – Everybody Come Outside!
Sparrow & The Workshop – Into The Wild
The Howling Hex – Rogue Moon
The Tailors – Come Dig Me Up
Topaz Rags – Capricorn Born Again
Various – My Estrogeneration
Wetdog – Frauhaus