On Oddfellow Casino’s Prince of the Starry Wheel (2022)
Bramwell sashays in with sparkling synths and slick snare-struck shuffle
Calling for the prince of soft regions made even moreso by stars
As fields and moorlands enchant and his angelic voice creates cosmos
In which the light that divides us is strong enough to seal scars.
Oddfellows Casino deals cards for all to grow lucky. What you feel
As you listen is this secret song of the heart, encompassing the sleeping giants
Who turn in this electro led ballad’s gold lyric, and the great elastic girl’s
Slow unwinding as she makes the straining for love its own art.
Bramwell’s songs mix the sweet where a writer like Neil Hannon stirred bitter.
His chansons are ecstatic and full of the majesty of the land. Nobody walks
Such terrain. Nobody sings of these subjects. Bramwells heart is bright flower
Emerging from stone, staining sand. Opening song Trespass gives way
To Ameland’s broken-heartache; its acoustic drive has synth screaming
As the singer turns and twists the dark wheel from despair into dream,
While gaining so much more than Neil Gaiman, as sonorous song signals fires
That the long lost and dead can still feel; ‘Whistle and I will run/
Through desert rains and winter sun/With a bruised heart I’ll come
And lay be down in the earth undone..’ Here is romance then,
And rhyme for those pressed into fragments. It is the song
Of the driftwood and of the gathered ghosts beneath piers.
But these are not Stanshall’s stinkfooted starfish.
These Saints are a part of the Bramwellian beauty.
For there is ache in the algae as every ruined wave
Brings back tears. Starlings have flown. Bramwell is birds.
They’re his emblem, and one can see him resplendent
In some past falconry. You see that soar in these songs
As you do across all his albums. For even despairing
Dear Doctor David is teaching you different ways and means
To feel free. Last Orders at the shoulder of Mutton has force,
And is indeed music-meat, slamming down chords like some giant butcher,
While elision led lines conjure Dylan by way of an ambient Tony Newley
Beamed in. Toby Visram’s drums power on, as Bramwell’s strings
And keys unlock meaning and the track trod becomes epic,
Combining each image which makes life as it is lived by most
Feel too thin. There is nothing fey to the folk that Oddfellows Casino
Is fond of, for there is march here and amble and so much more
Within stride. The Casino is both outside all known realms,
And part of a flame tamed place warm within us. His stare his sharp.
His sound soothing, as his reach and arms remain wide.
Beware My Love The Autumn People slides through as the piano
Assumes its composure. Unravelling synth and percussion
Storytell us all into place. As a forgotten people emerge
From Alan Garner’s ground like ghost cattle and one can see
How dew’s vapour is both the beard and the breath on each face.
‘The strangest days are the best,’ Bramwell sings, and in his
Spell-like swirl we live through them. The song is a spiral,
And incantation too; a time test. It mesmerises, enchants
And also disturbs at odd moments, in which every fellow,
Whether winning or not, sees fate crest. Summer Weaving
Has harps or what sounds like harps beside Bramwell.
His high, held voice becomes Robert’s as he traipses
And charts Wyatt’s trail, plotting a path free from jazz,
And with the avant-garde now retired, to make David B.
The defender of a spectacular air which can’t fail;
Free of our stains and the smear and stink of our present,
The rise and fall and chord sequence of this beautiful piece
Fuses us with the past and the pose of some ancient Crusader
An Ingmar Bergman of England, his new seal now seeking
Simplicity through time’s fuss. Prince of the Starry Wheel
Is day stars and achieveable orbits. It is the royalty within us
Enraptured no doubt by a glimpse of something bright
And bold shining still beyond the horizon. Bramwell’s spell
Reminds us that we have not seen the like of such, since.
Emily’s power pop pushes us to the very edge of disturbance.
It places steel in the fire in order to rear and rouse sparks.
It is a love song which steals the sensuality from the sacred
Bearing with it an anger for which Bramwell’s gentler refrains
Left no mark. His voice softens all while also allowing
For contrast, as the sharp circle of desire and loss shapes
The dark. The Quiet Man And His Dutch Wife enthrals.
Bramwell is at his best with these titles. This one male
Voice choir and softly nudging notes novels on.
For like his books, his records reveal deeper stories.
He is a writer, sound-maker and cineaste within song.
And he guides his guests well, from Visram’s Drums,
To Rachel James on soft vocals. To Teresa Gilles’ special
String colours; Ali Strachan on Cornet’s skilled carving,
And Emma Papper’s texture and detail thanks to her
Clarinet. The instrumentation extends Bramwell’s
Sonic system, and a vocoder lile wah-wah well well
In this concluding track is inspired as the cornet’s
Theme lifts and angels in ways no listener can forget.
The Oddfellow observes the legends of England
His musical path is a lesson that no other singer I know
Can quite reach. For there is majesty here. And a king
In the ear. So Princesses, Queens and Commanders,
Stay attendant at court. Let sound teach.
David Erdos 24/2/23
https://oddfellowscasino.bandcamp.com/album/prince-of-the-starry-wheel
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The 9th studio release from Oddfellow’s is an album of earth, feet, marches, burials and the passing of time. It takes its title from one of William Blake’s many colourful names for Isaac Newton and belies the record’s themes of our relationship with the the ground below our feet, from land rights and protest to the earth as our final resting place. The opening track – and single – was inspired by Nick Hayes’ The Book of Trespass, and is a passionate call to arms for new land rights, paying tribute to the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932 and the Greenham Common protests. It also features – with their blessings – the voices of author Nick Hayes and performance artist Lone Taxidermist. Elsewhere on the album is an electronic re-interpretation of Melanie’s 1972 song Summer Weaving; a psychogeographical journey from the Suffolk coast to a remote Dutch island in the track Ameland, the breezy Pixies-esque Emily and the twelve minute epic, Beware My Love the Autumn People which, lyrically, jumps from the horror-writings of Ray Bradbury to themes of loss and the landscapes of Sussex.
The album ends with The Quiet Man and his Dutch Wife, a drastic re-working of a track from 2002’s Yellow-Bellied Wonderland, that finally explodes with the mantra, ‘we all wake up at the end of the world.’
The album is dedicated to Dave Mounfield, close friend of the band and best-known for his roles as Geoffrey and landlord Jack in BBC Radio 4’s Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show.
www.drbramwell.com