Songdog

A hugely talented, intelligent, little-known and massively-underrated British alternative, folk noir band. Consists of three members: singer/songwriter/acoustic guitarist Lyndon Morgans, guitarist Karl Woodward, and drummer Dave Paterson (though the latter two play many other instruments as well, such as accordion, mandolin and keyboards). Lyndon and Karl hail from Blackwood, South Wales and Dave from Dundee, Scotland. The band have released four albums: "The Way Of The World" (2001), "Haiku" (2003), "The Time Of Summer Lightning" (2005) and "A Wretched Sinner's Song" (2008). All the albums are dark, poignant and densely complex with exquisitely sensuous, sparse musical arrangements and lyrics which are despairingly bleak, crudely raw, or spiritually questioning but always profoundly literate. Lyndon is an ex-playwright, and his knowledge and usage of words puts most other songwriters to shame. His singing is emotively intense and he and the band will take you on a journey into an underworld of drunks, losers, loners and melancholics; of change, anguish, pain and loss - a glorious netherland of spiritual angst and existential despair to the accompaniment of hauntingly evocative melodies. Beware though – when you discover this band, all other music will seem second-rate and mediocre.

Songdog believe:
Messing up must just be written in my DNA
Inside I was always dead, flesh and blood was my only disguise
It's like I've always lived in mourning, though for what I couldn't say
I was just never much good at that happiness thing
Broken-hearted is my default mode
And if there was any magic, I must have missed that too

by ceaselessidleness May 2, 2008

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