The Crowband – Blackwell

Mark Le Gallez, aka The Crowman, has been a hard-working musician for more than 40 years now. He fronted second wave Mod revivalists The Risk, while Sacred Hearts, Thee Jenerators as well as Mod revival supergroup Speakeasy also feature on his CV. He’s a multiinstrumentalist, songwriter, singer and producer, as well as being involved in running several specialist labels. He’s also owned and ridden many scooters since the late 70s; currently, at his home on Guernsey, he owns and rides seven scooters. His Crowband project, with him in his guise of The Crowman, has been following a steampunk-folk route for a while now. Blackwell is the fourth full-length album from The Crowband.

Steampunk-folk is quite a specialist, niche kind of subgenre, great inclusive fun when experienced in a live environment. Tracks included on Blackwell are a mix of dark content, poppier ditties with steampunkfolk underpinning, and also a lot of humour, some of which is intentionally surreal. Uncle Mark’s A Weirdo falls right into that category, with a host of named names being tagged as weirdos, with the tag on ‘is really bloody strange’, an audience participation number in a live setting I assume? King Of Sark, another with humorous lyrics: ‘The King Of Sark he’s called Pete!’. Darker content surfaces in Bloody Mary, for instance, a song about a murderess awaiting execution, while poppier moments surface in Oh Suzanna, Woo Woo Song, Prisoner Of Pain as well as the darker pop of (The Ghost of Ashley Cartwright) Laughing. Banjos, violins, theremin, harpsichord and all manner of less conventional (in a band) instruments feature. There’s even the short opener Caw ’Ett, and the longer monologue poem My Name Is Stuart, that are both spoken word. Clever, albeit simple rhymes in the latter from Stuart Seers, who during said monologue proclaims that he’d ‘rather ride my scooter than sit on a computer’, a sentiment most of us would be in full agreement with. Weird and wonderful, with a slice of surreal humour, is how I’d sum up The Crowband’s latest release. More information: mlegallez02@gmail.com