The first two Singing Loins albums were recorded in Billy Childish’s bathroom. Childish co-founded the Stuckism art movement and is the former partner of Tracey Emin, whose old bed is worth £2.5 million. If there was such a thing as taste, the bathroom recording studio would be worth £25 million and The Singing Loins would be capitalised on festival posters alongside Levellers.
“Stuckism is a quest for authenticity,” and you can’t get much more authentic than singing ‘Chatham Girls’ in front of Chatham girls (and boys) on a busy Chatham High Street with the aid of nothing but the human voice, guitars, and more enthusiasm than a child millionaire in a sweet shop. This is an authentic description of a performance by The Singing Loins in 1994, three years after their formation as a ‘trash-folk duo’ featuring Chris (Arfur) Allen and Chris Broderick, who sadly passed away in 2022. You can do what I did and go on YouTube, or you can get your clamouring hands on Camber ’87.
Chris’s passing prompted the Loins to return after a ten-year break, but with added fiddle, drums, electric and bass. Like last year’s album Twelve, the Loins’ new release is a re-recorded collection of older songs plus ‘Teeth & Eyes’. Imagine Shane McGowan with a Kent accent referencing David Bowie, and you will have an approximation of ‘Teeth and Eyes’, though it would be better to actually listen to it. By title alone, ‘Medway Delta Love Song’ could be compared to The Proclaimers’ ‘Sunshine On Leith’. “A man on a ship was welding / Arcing like an angel / And it felt like a sign” – heavenly, working-class lyrics over ‘Everybody Hurts’ chords and, yes, an achingly beautiful fiddle.
If you cross Bow Wow Wow’s ‘I Want Candy’ with the aforementioned Levellers, what do you get? A lazily formulaic journo sentence *and* ‘Chatham Girls’. “Chat-Chat-Chat…Chat-Chat!” You’ll be staring at a calendar wishing for the days to disappear just so you can bellow said refrain in a sun-drenched field. But no worries, because the next track is ‘Cheer Up!’ You might be disarmed by the first five seconds, which sound like Queens of the Stone Age plugging their guitars in, but again, worry not, as the rest of the track is a knees-up folk sing-a-long, albeit with a momentary Oasis riff.
After all that, a lie down is required. A nice, peaceful lie down. “Kiss me goodnight when I close my eyes / Take a hammer to my head” – ah, right. If Radox want to commission a folk song about a deadly love pact, they could buy the rights to ‘Drunk & Fed’. About £25 million should cover it. Or maybe the band would be happy with a plant-based hat?? “Do nothing for money / Or any notion of fame / Do nothing that isn’t for love / Or a crown of wild olives.” The interlocking fiddle and accordion on album closer ‘A Crown Of Wild Olives’ would bring a tear to the eye of the most hardened merchant seaman.
The Singing Loins are, according to themselves, big in Medway and Serbia. Camber ‘87 could and should expand their geographical reach. May they be big in Bosnia, colossal in Croatia, massive in Montenegro, and titanic in Tunbridge Wells.
Camber ’87 is out now via Spinout Nuggets
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Review by Neil Laurenson
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