IN THE smouldering wake of last week's feast of indie rock, today's Noise Annoys lowers its volume a little for words on two top singer/songwriters.
To be honest, not much singer/songwritery stuff is in regular rotation at Noise Annoys towers: exceptions include John Grant, Sera Cahoone, Courtney Barnett, Anna Calvi, Jeffrey Lewis and Malcolm Middleton.
I've also got plenty of time for Neil Young and J Mascis in unplugged mode and the odd cleansing spin of Johnny Cash and Ed Hamell.
Nick Drake's stuff is lovely, but it's never really 'spoken' to me and, while I can appreciate Bob Dylan, I'd sooner hear Bob Mould.
As for Ed Sheeran and his irritatingly bland ilk, most modern mealy mouthed 'acoustic pop' leaves me itching for a blast of AC/DC or Motorhead.
Praise Lemmy then for Arborist, AKA Mark McCambridge, the supremely talented, darkly witty singer-songwriter from the wilds of Co Antrim last mentioned in these pages with his excellent 2015 single Twisted Arrow.
That tune, featuring the dulcet tones of the one and only Kim Deal, is included on Mark's debut LP Home Burial, which comes out next week and comes highly recommended even to 'solo troubadour' sceptics.
Hopefully, they should be won over by A Man of My Age, one of the new record's stand-out tracks on which Mark offers us amusing insight into Arborist's apparently problematic creative process.
"And I can't write when my wife's at home / and I can't write when I'm there on my own / You'd say I can't write, if you read what I wrote" he laments even as the fruit of his laboured labour – a woozily pretty piano-driven tune, with acoustic/clean electric guitar and minimal drums augmented by deftly deployed strings, organ swells and a smidgen of sax –proves his self-doubt to be entirely unfounded.
In fact, the record features plenty of eminently inspired and memorable moments, from the soothing separation musings on Dark Stream ("It's when the ground starts to frost that I miss you the most / each swirling breath your ghost") to I Heard Him Leaving's arrestingly blunt account of bearing witness to infidelity and the cautionary account of addiction/obsession that is his deceptively gentle song, The Master.
Home Burial comes fully loaded with a lyrical authenticity you can't help but respond to, while its full-band-assisted musical make-up shows off Mark's talent for composing assuredly restrained yet engagingly dynamic songs that ebb and flow without ever over-reaching for the sake of 'epicness'.
Indeed, The Broken Light's croonsome, violin and wailing electric bolstered tale of riverside romance and the crashing wave-like chords which herald the chorus of Twisted Arrow's pretty, ambling country folk number are about as 'big' as Arborist goes: but it should be enough to spark 'a big big love', as Ms Deal once sang.
Mark's right-hand man for this record was Ben McCauley at Belfast's Start Together Studios, who first came to the attention of this column over a decade ago with his band Three Tales, a trio which actually served as Mr Shiels backing band way back when.
He's helped shape a auspicious debut for Arborist, which you can buy from next Friday November 11– see Arboristmusic.com for details on how/where.
Mr McCauley also has his fingers deep in the musical pie of the new single from Arborist comrade Robyn G Shiels, who will shortly be following up the NI Music Brick-winning debut LP A Lifetime of Midnights with a new EP of his trademark 'doom folk' (and possibly a Therapy? remix).
Its lead track, a slow-burning, ominous yet peculiarly pretty dirge called If I Were Thy Demon, is being released as a single next week and Robyn is putting on a Belfast launch gig to mark the occasion featuring a rare 'full band' performance.
He plays The Empire on Wednesday night, with sterling support from Hatchet Field, Waldorf & Canon.
Get the full skinny and possibly even a sneaky preview of the new tune at FB.com/robyngshiels.
