Stick In The Wheel
Album: Common Ground (Single)
Label: Static Carava
Tracks: 2
Website: http://www.stickinthewheel.com

Another two pieces of the increasingly impressive jigsaw that is Stick In The Wheel can now be revealed. I'm beginning to suspect that such is the white-heat creativity of these folks that they feel compelled to lay down in a recording each successive new song right straightaway when complete. Certainly this pair of brand new compositions shows further development in the songwriting, and advances the band's distinctive, individual character, their noted "raw and uncompromising" status, another notch or two.

Common Ground is a hard-driven 5/4 number telling the story of the constant erosion of people's rights through the gradual enclosure of their common land: a familiar enough theme in folksong, but here with the twist of a commentary on how we are complicit in our own suppression. It's powerful stuff, and Nicola's harsh, earthy, "native" lead vocal (with harmony from Fran Kempster) gives the statement its ideal mouthpiece. In stark contrast, the disc's second item, Hasp, is a (deliberately) extraordinarily sparse track, much in the style of a traditional lament, that takes the horse's work-bound tethered existence as a metaphor for "a life that sees liberty as a fleeting notion that must be grasped at the first opportunity".

Each of the songs receives an immediate, live-for-the-moment dusk-time recording that enhances the song's impact, and accentuates the "stripped down to the essence" nature of their music-making. And just as with the band's previous releases, much thought has been given to the packaging, with the production of a separate customised collector's edition.

David Kidman