Fishclaw - Monmouth’s Twelve (2020)

It would be easy to describe Fishclaw’s approach to folk music as anarchic or iconoclastic. Their debut album Black Crow, White Crow, combined a punkish aesthetic and liberal use of electronics to breathe new life into traditional musical forms. But the truth is more subtle than that. This band operates in a kind of shadow-world, a Lynchian dream of folk music where the old and the new are not as easily delineated as you might think. Monmouth’s Twelve, whose recording began in a conventional manner but was completed remotely during the early stages of lockdown, explores the darkest and roughest edges of traditional music – with all its duality and openness for reinterpretation – in the most innovative of ways.

Opener Haunted Weather begins with the kind of dense, dramatic build usually heard at the heavier end of post-rock, but soon explodes into an urgent blast of viola, accordion and whistle, helped along by a fast and extremely punchy rhythm section (Alex Leming on bass and Cameron Morrell on drums). The tune’s roots are French and its rhythm Bulgarian, but the disparate elements are spliced together so effectively that the visible joins become part of the piece’s essential structure. This is music that revels in the unusual nature of its component parts. The post-rock dynamics kick in again half-way through, as the track crashes to a halt then builds once more into a frenetic finale. The song’s title comes from a 2004 book on sound art by David Toop. The reference is fitting in two ways: Fishclaw’s experimentalism and their cut-and-paste approach to folk music are clearly influenced by the types of artistic practice that Toop writes about, and Toop also contributed to the discourse on hauntology, a movement whose preoccupation with the mysterious and often weird nature of memory and cultural history chimes with Fishclaw’s own take on the past.

The title track treads a different path: a reflective acoustic guitar piece by Rory Hobbs based on the executions carried out in the wake of the battle of Sedgemore in 1685. It is beautifully and mournfully backed by Shari Stacher’s whistle – the musical equivalent of an ignis fatuus, flickering in and out of view – while Adam Bowers provides the electronic backcloth, minimal and sepulchral, from which the tune can grow. Field Machine is entirely different again, displaying the group’s deep understanding of the rhythm and flow of dance music. And it’s not just traditional dance music that they channel – the kinetic, trance-inducing nature of the performance brings to mind a kind of ergot-fuelled rave with Simon Keep’s accordion and Jos Dow’s viola taking the place of programmed synths and samples (the multi-talented Dow is also responsible for the album’s uncanny, icy artwork).

But this doesn’t mean that synthetic sounds are always pushed into the background. This is a band who can make a quick-smart about-turn from trad to avant-garde and back again, sometimes in a few seconds. 108, the quavering half-minute intro to Amalgam, showcases eclectic and electronic tendencies of Bowers (sound design) and Keep (synths) while still leaving room for the viola to play a part, while Amalgam itself treads the line between disturbing and soothing. Simon Keep draws a minimal piano pattern, which is then taken up by his own synth and Dow’s viola. Echoes of the past and the future meet and form eerie juxtapositions out of melodies that are almost nostalgic. The result is something like a folky Mogwai, but with the neoclassical/minimalist leanings of Kentucky chamber-rock outfit Rachel’s.

On Mole County, Hobbs picks out a delicate filigree of mandolin over an ancient-sounding accordion melody before a glitchy, cut up bass and drum part hijacks the tune part-way through. It is a jaw-dropping moment, the most striking of the album’s many musical switchbacks, as exhilarating as it is unexpected. It is also the most obvious example of Fishclaw’s unwillingness to play by the rules. It’s clear that they’re not in thrall to the gatekeepers of traditionalism and are absolutely set on following their own unique vision, and this will pay off in the long term as it will lead to exposure to younger audiences who are more willing to admit the influence of other (contemporary, urban, experimental) forms of music.

As Monmouth’s Twelve progresses, we become aware of certain modes of working that become calling cards for the band. One of these is their propensity for building tunes out of disparate components so that tracks are often split into two or more sections. This gives them, depending on how the technique is employed, the sense of serene growth or violent upheaval. When the latter is true, as in Mole County, it feels as if a piece has multiple personalities, one gaining the upper hand over the other, this creates a palpable tension, not comfortable but nonetheless satisfying. Another example of this occurs on 367, whose opening bass licks owe as much to the slow funk of Bootsy Collins as to any iteration of folk music. Soon a Celtic fiddle tune takes centre stage, and this, in turn, is superseded by another blast of post-rock augmented by Will Heaton’s trombone.

Monmouth’s Twelve is an undeniably busy album in terms of the sheer number of ideas flying around, but its arrangements never feel cluttered. And it has its reflective moments too. Final track Sceadugenga (inspired by a shape-shifting undead beast from East Anglian folklore) is a slowly shifting soundscape composed entirely of Hobbs effects-heavy guitar and Keep’s Juno synth. But again it’s all about the tension, this time between the equally soothing and disconcerting aspects of the music. And refreshingly Fishclaw aren’t afraid to leave things unresolved. There is an open-ended quality to much of the music on Monmouth’s Twelve that reflects the creative freedom the band allow themselves and also hints that they will be willing to expand their palette even further in the future. It’s a thrilling prospect: on this evidence they are already one of the most exciting and original bands currently working within the loose framework of folk music.