On Oddfellow Casino’s Maison Mouton Sessions, Volume 1. (Nightjar Records)
With his man’s voice he sings but it is the sweet sounding
Boy within who beguiles you; from under a haunted moustache
And through Brighton and all of its blazing ocean wave,
Song cuts through as La Maison Mouton becomes the ideal
Home exhibition for these Doncastrian dreams and a music
That in being remade sees souls saved. David Bramwell
Is my favourite Band. The Oddfellow Casino’s no gamble,
On both red and black you find beauty beneath every breath,
Or behind as songs from his oeuvre are earthed in and around
A God-thumbed piano, which replaces the uplift of, say,
Land of the Cuckoo with a call from far forests, and an English
Eden perhaps of the mind. This album was made two years ago
And he’ll have moved on. Bramwell does that. (Polymaths
Populate quickly as he breaches the gap between Alan Moore
And Ron Geesin, esoterica energizing all this David ever
Seeks or looks still to find.) And yet just a few seconds in
There it is: beauty burning. “Whistle and I will run/
Through Desert rains and Winter sun/With a bruised heart,
I’ll come/And lay me down in the earth, undone..”
If there have ever been sweeter lines, then in that time
Air was sugar. The piano spills through his fingers
As a bubbling brook, glistening. You can even hear
How a hymn can be secular sourced as he’s singing;
He is not as holy as Hollis, but is Sylvian sacred,
Another David who illuminates listening. Ameland
Is the land that I’d like to live in, full of starlings
And sorrow and lonely piers where hope swells.
While We will Be Here intones and gently rouses
Hearth and heart for a present in which what was lost
And what’s to come start to gell. Stone Riders revives
That sense of myth in cold country. From Alan Garner’s
Gain to your border, the past’s precious prizes
Will, in making mist order air into a new frequency
From which we discern scent and shadow,
As a viable presence which is telling us all to beware.
“The silent tears of standing stones” says it all,
As Bramwell reverse chronicles chaos, soothing
The soil with his singing, which douses the dark,
Door ajar. As Nightjar Records return these breaths
From cranes and birds beside language, communing
As chorus in your ear and heart, near or far. If you put
The bird to sleep the dream dies, alongside flight’s
Aspirations; If you do not have your own ethos,
Your own emblems too, all is lost. Bramell stands like
Captain Britain’s Brian Braddock, time tailed too,
In those old Marvel UK comic reprints, while below
The Black Knight and Steve Parkhouse bridge
The ancient Earths at our cost. Winter in a Strange Town
Surrounds the contemporary tragedy we’re all facing,
But if braced by Bramwell we could fortell with this sheen
We might in time warm and return the heat of old fires
That would scorch the scum across oceans
Who in misleading us all deter dreams. Soaring strings
Singe the path, beatific brass hones and honours,
These midnight missives which in each attempt,
Swallow day. Camping on the Moon guitar blasts,
Before the thoughtful keys start unlocking those doors
In air, sense and landscape that only brilliant melody
Can convey. And this Oddfellow, self named evens out
All perception, he makes mask and mountain
From wound, or scar, curse or kiss. His songs stir,
They allay, each unease and disruption. If you feel despair
He’ll care for you, in just a handful of notes, body bliss
As we become as one with the song, as if all along
We all sang it. In this way, time is tincture, is curative,
Even spell. As Bramwell becomes magus-like,
Even while Astronaut glamping. He calls for the Quiet Man
Deep within him who resounds through his throat
And compels. Steve Moore’s spirit on Shooters Hill
Brothers Blake in Watling Street’s stately reading,
As the guitar chime on Oh, Sealand is replaced
By Piano, the goosebumping skin flowers up,
As transfiguration took place, which is perhaps the aim
Of all music, and this version (sans Alan) is a careful
Church where the cup of wine is not blood, but connected
To something more vital; something more restorative,
With more flavour for those of all faiths than Christ’s sup.
And David B. is a drink from a bottomless chalice.
He is King Arthur’s glass, and the vessel from which Penda’s
Fen is refreshed. The Lighthouse Keeper reminds
And returns and watches over the soundwaves of a singer,
Songwriter and sung angel on land who charms flesh.
If you haven’t heard it, attend, this and all of Oddfellow
Casino’s spun stories. They are small symphonies,
Odes and ditties and sitting pretty too on love’s crest.
David Erdos 23/5/25
Source: Oddfellow’s Casino & David Bramwell
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