Is there anything more tedious than the cliché, “good things come to those who wait”? Is it just an excuse to sit on your hands? A charter for the meek? Maybe, but it is also, in the case of the new album from Scottish whirlwind The Langan Band, very true indeed.
Ten years on from their debut John Langan (guitar, vocals, foot-stomping percussion), Alastair Caplin (violin) and Dave Tunstall (double bass) have proved that patience is, indeed, a virtue. Plight O’ Sheep is a storming thing, full of songs to bellow at the top of your voice and tunes to leap around to. It’s as good an album of contemporary, festival friendly Folk as you’ll hear all year. There’s nothing lazy, nothing meek here.
These 10 tracks were recorded live up in the Black Bay Studios, Outer Hebrides and perfectly capture a band that have been waiting to unleash something incredible. One Whole Year starts with Langan’s voice, full of world-weary honesty, a voice that’s seen and done everything and knows just how good things can be. As the guitar, bass and violin joins the song you, too, remember how delightfully uplifting a bruised romantic can be as the band chugs along next to him. It’s a statement, a reminder, that even if there’s “one whole year of pain”, then the good things are well worth the sacrifice.
There may not have been an album in ten years but anyone that’s been to a Folk festival over that time will have seen The Langan Band tearing up stages all over the place. There’s much on Plight O’ Sheep that will bring a huge smile to the faces of those that love to twirl and leap in summer fields. The Drunken Dwarf is, of course, the shortest track on the album, and is a Klezmer drenched frenzy of a thing, Caplin’s violin kicking right off. It does much the same towards the end of Come When I Call You. It might be based around a lullaby but there won’t be much sleeping to this one. If you can have a rousing lullaby, one that simmers with a barely suppressed rage then this is it.
You can almost feel Bastard Hills of Totterdown straining at the leash, desperate to be savaging delirious crowds wherever it finds them. A drunken story that veers from rabble rousing indie folk to bar-room inspired spoken word to wonky cabaret crooning. It’s a song that you’ll want to throw your arms around in an unsteady waltz ’round a packed and excitable tent. You’ll yearn for a pint of cider as the sun goes down.
As much as there’s plenty of good old-fashioned jumping about music on Plights O’ Sheep there are some terrific changes of mood and tone too. Some even veer dangerously towards Prog. Leg of Lamb starts with a great bouncy bass line and seriously raucous harmonies before violin, guitar and bass weave around one another in a great, happy mass. There’s something so heart-warming in this praise song for food, it’s the sound of a long, lusty, noisy, fun filled lunch. One that has digressions, diversions and changes of pace.
Perhaps the most arresting of the changes in tone is the simply beautiful Sweetness. This is honest, uncomplicated love where a violin softly drones beneath an acoustic guitar as the song builds an emotional core. As violin and pipes wrap layers around it, the song becomes a place that is “safe and warm”. It’s the opposite of toxic masculinity, it’s an open, earthy masculinity instead. Open Your Eyes is, similarly, gruffly romantic and is just as gorgeous. The huge emotional cascade that builds fills the heart to bursting.
Where the storytelling and song writing are, undoubtedly, superb, The Langan Band know the value of a damn fine tune too. Djelem Djelem is a Romani anthem, impassioned and celebratory, it’s full of late-night harmonies and a violin that swings between malevolent creaking, the sweetest coaxing and, finally, a furious salvo, guaranteed to twist dancing legs into impossible shapes. Old Tom’s Waltz/Reel Valencia finishes the album with something that is, quite simply, utterly mighty. Caplin’s violin is mayhem inducing, starting fast then becoming faster and faster, squeezing every last drop of Balkan goodness from the tune. This is going to blow the roof off of many a venue.
Imagine, then, if every “good thing” that came along after some waiting was as great as this album. Maybe, then, people wouldn’t be in such a rush all of the time. Plight O’ Sheep is a hell of an album.
Gavin McNamara
TallFolk 