Everything Is Great!, the new album forged by a collaboration between US singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton, her bandmate Joe Plowman and Mathias Kom and Ariel Sharratt of Canadian garage-folk outfit The Burning Hell has been one of my musical highlights of the year so far, so it was with great anticipation that I wended my way from South to North London for the second of their two consecutive nights at The Lexington.
The stage is set with three stools and a beer keg, which serves as a seat for Sharratt, with the night separated into two sections – the first primarily featuring songs from the album and the second seeing the quartet collaborate on renditions of each other’s songs.
The night begins with the album’s title track, and the recorded version’s mixture of cosy country warmth, politically charged lyrics and heavy irony is amplified 100 times in a live setting, Mathias and Carsie taking the opportunity to ad-lib the conversational elements for a UK audience to great effect. The chemistry between the four musicians is so palpable it’s astonishing to think they only met for the first time a year and a half ago (at Souris Show Hall, The Burning Hell’s local venue on Prince Edward Island – a performance recounted with glee by Kom during one of the many between song chats) – we can definitely feel the love in the room.
And despite the cartoon violence of many of the songs (including multiple calls for the decapitation of billionaires), there’s plenty of love in the songs too, with the hope of a bright and beautiful post-capitalist society at their heart. Recent single ‘Price of Eggs’ is a case in point, starting out as an all too reasonable debate about ovoid inflation and utilising the ‘proper’ democratic channels before spiraling outwards into the inequality inherent in the system and calls for revolution (very much in the French sense).
In their recent protest playlist feature for Joyzine, Mathias said that the foursome “believe that a message can be far more powerful and effective when it comes with a laugh”, and they’re as good as their word tonight. Wry smiles spread across the audience during ‘Peace & Freedom’, an air-punching chant-along stadium anthem with its tongue thrust so firmly in its cheek that it’s poking through the other side. Audible guffaws fill the air during ‘Canadian Flag’ – a 21st century ‘Modest Proposal‘ for nationalist outdoorsmen set to a rousing country-folk acoustic strum. And the loaded silence placed by Kom after the titular opening line of ‘Fascists Are Good’, breaks into an infectious fit of the giggles, building perfectly to the most pugnacious of punchlines in its final verse.
Adding to this sense of fun, the videos for the album’s two singles to date have featured puppets (that’s definitely puppets with a ‘P’ and not an ‘M’ in case Disney’s lawyers are reading this) taking vocal lines and often being the ones to ratchet up the revolutionary fervour. Sadly they’re not able to join us for today’s show, which Carsie puts down to excessive luggage charges, but they’re here in spirit and indeed in voice, particularly on ‘Stafford Beer’, which sees Kom’s gruff vocalisation of the titular deceased British theorist introduce a Sesame Street inspired romp based around his best known quote “The purpose of a system is what it does”.
The set closes with a beautifully simple rendition of Malvina Reynolds’ ‘I Don’t Mind Failing’, a track which both artists have separately covered on their own albums, and which rouses the audience into a poignant (and somewhat sweary) singalong.
After a short break, we pick up where we left off with Carsie and The Burning Hell trading songs from their respective back catalogues, each of which is tied firmly to the political mast of their co-written tunes from the first half – albeit some (like Carsie’s smoky jazz manifesto ‘Rich People’) more overtly than others (such as ‘Birdwatching’, The Burning Hell’s typically verbose ode to dropping out and escaping the rat race).
The Burning Hell have a knack for building audience participation into their songs, and the stripped-back, drum-free line up of today’s show brings the lyrics even more sharply into focus, imploring us all to join in with the post-apocalyptic refrain of ‘Dirty Microphones’, urge on our unlikely heroine of the cyberwars on ‘The Robots vs Mrs Patel’, and bellow the chorus line to ‘Fuck the Government, I Love You’ from the bottom of our souls.
This is my first experience of seeing Carsie Blanton live, so I can’t comment on how the collaborative set-up has altered the experience, all I can say is that it’s working for me. The parallels with her co-conspirators are clear to see in the humour and heart that fuels her songs, though delivered perhaps with a sharper tongue when one is called for, and while The Burning Hell might add a little punk-pop meat to the folk skeleton of their songs from time to time, Carsie’s are more often fleshed out with a bit of country and western. ‘Ugly Nasty Commie Bitch’ raises the roof with its quickfire takedown of mutually destructive online abuse, while ‘The Future’ and a set-closing ‘Little Flame’ are both achingly beautiful embodiments of the hope left at the bottom of Pandora’s Box.
We leave The Lexington with broad smiles on our faces and head home to sharpen our guillotines and mix up a batch of molotovs.
Everything Is Great! by Carsie Blanton and The Burning Hell is out now as a digital download via Bandcamp
The tour continues in Ireland and Germany throughout April and May – dates and tickets here
Carsie Blanton: Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
The Burning Hell: Website / Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Joe Plowman: Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Review and photography by Paul Maps
Keep up to date with all new content on Joyzine via our
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Mailing List