Ignore
what you hear, pop music’s
great at the moment. Especially
when it’s done in the
beautiful but slightly unkempt
style of Half Cousin.
Half
Cousin is a collective
revolving around main songwriter/singer
Kevin Cormack. The ethos
behind the music of Half
Cousin is “short,
melodic songs made from
junk!”. It’s
perfect pop, but rather
the pop of Tom Waits or
Arab Strap. Not trying
too hard. Music made with
accordions, clarinet and
wooden blocks all tripping
over each other. But like
all great music it just
doesn’t need to try,
it just is.
The
founding members of the band
met at school in the Orkneys,
Scotland where much of their
subject matter comes from.
Listening to their music
its difficult not to conjure
up your own images of the
place, as the majority of
the songs are inspired by
life on the islands. For
instance, the latest single ‘Country
Cassette’ was inspired
by Kevin’s Uncle who
booked Country and Western
bands for the Pubs and Clubs
of Orkney. ‘I used
to work at a petrol station
with him and we'd drive to
work on freezing cold, snowy
winter mornings listening
to his Country cassettes
on his car stereo.’
Part
of the joy of listening to
Half Cousin comes from hearing
the joins and spotting the
cracks. There are electronic
squawks, asthmatic accordion,
finger picked acoustic guitar,
shambolic junk percussion
and otherworldly vocals from
Cormack. So Lo-Fi then? Definitey
not, but there aren’t
many more natural or organic
sounding groups around, as
you’ll no doubt hear
as soon as the off-beats
and acoustic strumming of
the debut single Half Turn
make their presence known.
Now
based in London after landing
a record deal (with Gronland – home
of NEU!), the Half Cousin
collective has grown in numbers
and stature. With fellow
Orcadian Jimmy Hogarth they
recruited two members of
the late great Joe Strummer’s
band the Mescaleros. A couple
of low key dates in the capital
pre-empted the band packing
their suitcases and heading
over to Texas, for an appearance
at this year’s South
By South West that, thanks
to a jam-packed audience,
did wonders for Celtic-American
relations.
The
band has just released their
debut album, “The Function
Room”. In explaining
the title Kevin hits upon
the underlying theme of the
Half Cousin ideal: ‘I
like listening to musicians
who challenge the functions
of specific instruments,
or try to make other objects
into musical instruments...
Those are the kind of people
I’d like to have in
the Function Room, with my
ear to the door’. With “The
Function Room” the
Half Cousin family looks
set to grow and grow. 'Come
across them along some byway
at Glastonbury you might
even care to join in' (The
Times).
CRAIG
McLEAN ON POP -
From The Scotsman
Kevin
Cormack isn't entirely sure
how he came to be signing
a record contract at London
Zoo on Wednesday. It - the
zoo, not the contract - was
the Germans' idea, he insists. "Maybe
they were trying to make
me feel at home and wanted
to put me in the seal enclosure!"
Cormack
is from Kirkwall in the Orkneys.
He's the singer-songwriter
behind Half Cousin; this
week, he and his schoolfriend
Jimmy Hogarth released their
first single, Half Turn/Mrs
Pilling. "The Germans" are
the people behind a label
called Gronland. It has offices
in London and Berlin, and
is best known for reissuing
the Neu! catalogue a few
years ago. As a long-time
fan of Kraftwerk and Can,
Cormack felt these were people
he could trust. At the age
of 29, he'd put in the hours
and the years in the run-up
to his first album. He couldn't
just throw it away on any
old Tom, Dick or record company
Herbert.
But
first things first. Half
Turn/Mrs Pilling is released
on For Us, a totty imprint
of the reinvigorated Rough
Trade. In its short life
the smaller label has established
itself as the tasteful boutique
that brings you debut releases
by interesting new bands
in a limited edition style
(see: the Hokum Clones, the
Earlies, Adem).
Half
Cousin's thing, says Cormack,
is pretty straightforward: "short,
melodic songs made from junk".
In the case of Half Turn,
this means wheezing, breezy
folk music. It's a neat little
pop song, with part of the
joy coming from hearing the
joins and spotting the cracks.
There are electronic squawks
and emphysemic accordion,
shambling acoustic guitar
and high, otherworldly vocals
from Cormack. Ivor The Engine,
seemingly, is on percussion.
"The
song's about a character
who runs away and what's
changed about him when he's
found again," says Cormack. "I
make stories into the songs,
but if you read the words
they're not exactly linear,
they're fragmented."
Mrs
Pilling makes more sense,
mainly because its words
were written by someone else.
Spoken by Cormack in his
soft, curly Orcadian accent
and set over randomly-strummed
guitar and can-barely-be-bothered
woodwind, they're taken from
Faces In The Water, a novel
by New Zealand writer Janet
Frame (author of An Angel
At My Table).
It's
a wonderful single, magical,
understated and somehow elegantly
chaotic. Even the sleeve
is spot-on: a collage constructed
of cassette tape, felt pen
and an image of a woman's
face, all put together by
Cormack, a painting graduate
of Duncan of Jordanstone
art college in Dundee.
Cormack's
musical roots lie in the
folk scene in Orkney. After
graduating from college,
Cormack moved back to the
islands. Alongside stints
in traditional bands, he
wrote his own songs and experimented
with four-track recordings.
Cormack
hooked up with Hogarth, who
was by this time running
a recording studio in Kilburn,
London. Most of this year
has been spent recording
their debut album, due for
release in March; the same
month, Half Cousin play at
Texas's influential music
showcase South By Southwest.
Before that there's a
second single, Country Cassette. "It's
inspired by my uncle, who
books Irish country bands
in Orkney. I used to work
with him in a petrol station
and we would drive there
on cold, snowy mornings listening
to tapes of all these bands."
Half
Cousin are not alone in their
desire to "take the
folk thing and do something
subversive with it".
Fife's Fence Collective have
given us the odd Syd Barrett-type
musings of Lone Pigeon, Pip
Dylan and King Creosote,
while their compadre James
Yorkston has released an
EP featuring traditional
Scots tunes. Hopes are high
that next year's Beta Band
album will also evince a
return to the dazzlingly
eclectic, beat-spewing folk'n'roll
of pre-Hot Shots II material.
Kevin
Cormack doesn't claim to
be an anti-alchemist, conjuring
base music from technological
gold. "Nah, that's Jimmy's
job. I'm quite proud of being
crap. We're trying to customise
things - make music from
metal boxes and coathangers
and bins and wooden spoons."
After
some rumination, he decides
that what Half Cousin are
about is "provid[ing]
a home for orphaned instruments.
We had this idea of doing
a fantasy band. In the way
that Belle & Sebastian
sometimes sound like a weird
school band. I like the idea
that it feels amateur, like
it's about to fall apart
at any minute." |
