Seeing double - Good Habits and Agent Starling

Good Habits are a duo from Manchester - Bonnie Schwarz (vocals/cello) and Pete Shaw (accordion/cajón.) By a quirk of fate, they were touring New Zealand when the pandemic left them stranded in the town of Paekākāriki, so they took advantage of their exile to record their delightful debut album, Going for Broke.

The combination of cello and accordion might sound like an unpromising, insufficient line-up but Shaw's accordion displays a rich variety of styles, an equal partner to Schwarz's cello, while the latter's vocals are engagingly clear and unaffected.

On first hearing Going for Broke I found it an upbeat, pop-folk affair, reminiscent of Fairground Attraction - pleasing enough but not earth-shattering. But these songs take a while to reveal fully their complexity and the sophistication of their lyrics, melodies and arrangements. The duo are musical tricksters, relishing irregular time signatures and a tendency to reprise motifs just when you think the song is over.

After a few more listens I grew to love the emotional warmth and fullness of Good Habits' sound, so I was pleased to hear they’ve recently released a follow-up album, Antipody. One of the highlights of the new collection is a cover of ‘She Bangs the Drum’ (the 1989 hit by fellow Mancunians the Stone Roses.)

As with Going for Broke, Antipody chugs along, melodically and rhythmically hooking the listener from the opening track I Will Still Be Here. Schwarz's vocal blends warmly with the backdrop of her own cello and Shaw’s accordion and, best of all, the duo have retained their sense of playfulness. Now back in the UK, Good Habits are touring a number of venues, including Bristol Folk Festival and Shropshire’s adorable Beardy Folk Festival in June.

Another unusual duo who have recently released their second album are Agent Starling, featuring hurdy-gurdy player Quentin Budworth and Louise Duffy-Howard (aka Lou Loudhailer) on vocals, bass and rhythm tracks. Back in the 1980s, the latter was the bassist with one of my favourite indie bands, Red Guitars (who have recently reformed and are touring again.)

Agent Starling’s debut album European Howl was a complex, immersive and at times disorienting listening experience and their new release, Constellation of Birds, displays more of their mesmerising and highly original sound. There are seven new songs plus two traditional tunes, O’Carolan’s Irish waltz ‘Bridget Cruise’ (which is given an oddly Japanese flavour) and a version of Swedish polska ‘Hälleforsnäsar’ embedded inside a track called ‘Scandiland’ which begins like the incidental music to a Scandi-noir thriller. As with the first album, Constellation of Birds features the violin and cello of special guest Dexter Duffy-Howard.

With tracks like ‘Paqaratz’ and ‘The Stonemason’s Dream,’ Constellation of Birds is an album that firmly establishes Agent Starling as incomparable purveyors of a unique, edgy, off-kilter soundtrack to modern life.

Living on the ceiling

Avid followers of this blog may have been dismayed to find I haven’t published a new post here for a few months. (Well, I can hope that someone cares that much!) This sounds like a “my-dog-ate-my-homework” kind of excuse but here goes... At the end of last October, part of the ceiling of my attic collapsed. And so began a lengthy process of finding a builder and then waiting a few months for a succession of builders, plasterers, electricians, painters and carpet-fitters to come along, make repairs and renovations and leave me with a newly-restored attic/guest bedroom.

Of course, you can’t repair an attic while it’s full so it also necessitated me moving furniture, clothes, books, bric-a-brac and all the kinds of things you might expect to find in an attic ( - just about anything that you don’t want to keep in any other room and can’t bear to throw away - ) into various other parts of the house, including my office. If you want to stop a writer (or any other type of creative) from working I can recommend arranging for their attic ceiling to collapse as a perfect way to scupper all creative output for several months.

I have managed to write no more than one song and a handful of album reviews since the ceiling first began to fall down. Work on my novel, several short stories, ideas for articles, recordings for my next album and even blog posts has been suspended while, week after week, tradesmen have been running up and down my stairs at unexpected times of the day, turning my electricity on and off as the whim takes them, playing Fleetwood Mac and the Bee Gees at high volume and generating a cloud of dust that covered every surface of the house, only to be renewed the next day after Sisyphean efforts at hoovering and dusting.     

Now that the renovations are complete and I can gradually start moving things back to their rightful places (which, in some cases, is the charity shop or the recycling centre) I feel able to concentrate once more. So you can expect more regular blog posts while I play catch-up on the things I’ve been meaning to share with you. But, first, would you mind giving me a hand with some of these boxes?...