St Gregory Orange were one of our standout acts that appeared on Wakefield based label Philophobia Music’s 2010 compilation Under the Bus Station Clock.
Their interesting, sombre track on this compilation, Pan Away And Fade To Black, was enough for us to name them one of our top ten bands to watch out for in 2011. Thing is, as with another on that list, Django Django, we were a year too early. It has taken them a while to come up with their second album but as the saying goes, it has been worth the wait.
Turns out there’s far more to the band than a spot of synth sound scaping that typified Pan Away And Fade To Black and which starts Chalklines, the opening track of Midnight At The Sycamore Lounge.
As Chalklines progresses the soundscape passes and the abstract lyrics come in the album quickly turns to some kind of northern English, Flaming Lips, Pavement, Pulp hybrid. It’s not a great opening, a little unnerving in places, especially the bit about “starting drinking in the afternoon” but you get the sense that is maybe the point. Their world is not meant to be easy going. There’s a lot of drinking going on, not nice drinking instead a kind of unpleasant, weary drinking to forget type drinking.
The sparkle of this album though is its ability to create their own universe, even if it’s a bit of a crap one, set in the wee small hours, possibly on a park bench in a Northern town, watching the dawn break as two blokes relive the horrors and joys of a Saturday night out.
It’s not until the well worked string and acoustic guitars of third track Salem AM that the album and the night out with the St Gregory Orangers really gets going, part Streets, part Malkmus this album oozes slacker pop with intelligence. My Exile Years get s a little more Flaming Lips as it “sleep walks through my waking life with a bottle in my teeth” and the St Gregory lads struggle again to remember a night out, possibly while clutching a can of Red Bull.
Somnambulist Atlas and the backing vocals on No Tragedies are other highlights on an album that is at times difficult, frequently clever and above all different. I guess spending the early hours in Wakefield with The Flaming Lips, Pavement and two blokes carrying synths trying to remember the events of only a few hours ago was never going to be an average night out.
7.5/10
by Joe Lepper
Midnight At The Sycamore Lounge is released by Philophobia Music on May 28. For more information click here.
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