album review
Stick In The Wheel
A Thousand Pokes
LP/CD/DIGITAL
Out 11 October 2024
The duo of Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter are Stick In the Wheel, a radical folk band ‘who’ve been bringing an energy, political urgency and experimental drive to traditional music for a decade’ (the Quietus). Louder Than War first covered them ten years ago and latecomer Ged Babey finally concedes that folk was and still is as important as punk rock.
The only folk music I’ve ever become really enamored with in the past is the ‘raw Medway folk’ of the Singing Loins and last year the faultless ‘folk opera’ ..And One Red Mitten. So I’m not an expert, so this review is going to mostly be the publicity sheet.
It was my friend Phil who has been recommending Stick In The Wheel to me for several years now and finally found a suitable gateway video which got me interested. Nicola Kearey is caught in action at her best, giving the audience firm instructions to clap in time and a great performance, as well as, in the words of Madonna ‘giving good face’. I soon realised it’s the song though, as well as the way she sings it: A child murder ballad with a long history, and numerous versions.
Stick In The Wheel do exactly what that Quietus quote in the header says; they give the traditional an energy, urgency and contemporary drive. Full of dark humour, told with a straight face.
Here’s what the new album is about…
SITW’s fourth studio album is a satirical celebration of mistakes. A joyous lambasting of everyone and everything that’s wrong in the world, against the real-time backdrop of global uncertainty, corruption and political unrest.
A London Charivari. Rough Music. A gleeful old-fashioned cancelling. A Chaunter’s delight. 14th Century recording demons collecting mistakes in a sack. Women mugging rich merchants. Nettles being pissed on. S**t food at Lent. A terrible plan. An undoing. The aftermath of a car crash. Catching people doing something they shouldn’t. Nursery rhymes re-imagined as death threats. Behind the sarcastic acerbic delivery, Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter convey thoughtful, essential interpretations encouraging us all to check ourselves, through the multi-layered music of cities through time. ‘A Thousand Pokes’ is about as far away from pastoral folk music as you can get.
In their typical wry city-weary style, a beady eye is cast over those committing wrongs in plain sight, with Kearey narrating a series of tales of people f**king up, or being f**ked up, with some brief respite in Lavender – one of London’s oldest street melodies – the album being named after the 14th Century story of Tittivilus, the recording demon, who collects scribes’ mistakes (pokes) and the idle chatter of the “liars with their hairy tongues” congregation. Kearey’s performance can both charm you into her confidence and bait you into an aggressive fracas. Each song’s character is fully inhabited with a fierce tenacity, whether that’s punchy spoken word (“The Cramp”, “A Thousand Pokes”), heartfelt balladry (“Lavender”, “Watercress”) or powerful psyche-folk (“Burnt Walk”, “Steals The Thief”), almost like a Cockney Piaf.
“We sing these songs because we are the same people that would have sung them 200 years ago. It’s not a fantasy, or a cosplay, it’s a reality, for us. Trying to make the music ours, our own tradition, to tease out a link to past communities and all their threads and tendrils, mix and match as people assimilated into the city.” says Kearey
Despite this seriousness, the album’s working-class dry gallows humour carries a stoic “if you don’t laugh you’ll cry” feeling amongst the corruption, scandals and barefaced lies we all observe on a daily basis, with a warning that “only you can fix your deficits” and “it’s your words and deeds that matter…and let me tell you, they speak volumes”.
The gentle persuasion of Carter’s dobro guitar is at once twisted into thug-like distorted riffs, and teased into intricate deft lacework melodies with a Baroque flair, a chimaera that reinforces and underpins the heavy rhythms that are another trademark of Stick In The Wheel’s work. “Crystal Tears” and “Steals The Thief” bookend the record, these are tracks that show more of a modern influence with drones, hard-tuned vocal, psychedelic guitars; a reflection of their immediate culture and the sounds of their environment.
“We wanted to make a record that sounded like us, where we’re from, in all its complexity. At the core is our version of traditional music, made in the city, with influences from everywhere” says Carter.
The core of the record imagines a sound of traditional London music, where the musical continuum is unbroken by the population decimated by the world wars, or by gentrification and social cleansing that has forced communities apart, and yet absorbs all the influences of all the communities that call London their home. Carter and Kearey attempted sessions at The George Tavern, Whitechapel, and in Spitalfields, at Denis Severs’ House, and a restored weaver’s townhouse, carrying the aesthetic of the record in their heads as they moved from location to location, before settling into an old factory building and their own workshop. The resulting sparse and economical sound is harsher, more present, more essentially them. It is a mighty haranguing that demands your attention.
(Italicized content is the press release… this is me…)
Chumbawamba did this kinda thing but it got a bit dry and worthy. Stick In the Wheel sound like the Velvet Underground with an auto-tuned Cher on vocals on one song and like Brel if he came from Spitalfields on others. Nursery rhymes and drones sit side by side with a punk rock sneer and underdog outlook.
I can’t recommend this album highly enough if you are tired of mainstream music or rock’n’roll. There may well be other folk artists making great music but from what I can see and hear based on this album Stick In the Wheel are currently the Only Folk Band That Matter and will appeal to punks, cynics, lovers of history, the opened minded and the pissed-off who have never considered the genre to be worthwhile and relevant to their lives and for their listening pleasure.
SITW are ‘punk rock’ and this is probably their best album yet, and needs to be heard by people outside of their ‘demographic’…. I hate to use terms like that but you-know-what-I-mean.
Stick In The Wheel 2024 LIVE DATES
25.10.24 Nottingham Bodega
26.10.24 Manchester Deaf Institute
28.10.24 York The Crescent
30.10.24 London Oslo
01.11.24 Aldershot West End Centre
02.11.24 Ramsgate Music Hall
03.11.24 Bristol Thekla
28.11.24 Oxford Common Ground
30.11.24 Totnes Things Happen Here
02.12.24 Birmingham Kitchen Garden Café SOLD OUT
03.12.24 Liverpool Philharmonic
05.12.24 Kendal Brewery Arts
08.12.24 Lewes Con Club
10.12.24 Hayling Island Costa Festival
Tickets on sale now at the official website
All words Ged Babey
(This review may baffle fans of SITW and others, but read my biog, my writing is generally aimed at my peers and contemporaries… x GB)
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