Sophocles. Dennis Potter. The painter El Greco. Not the usual collection of influences that go towards shaping an album, but then Trembling Bells are not your usual sort of band. The Sovereign Self is a remarkable work from remarkable musicians – one of Britain’s most distinctive and exciting groups.
“It’s darker than our other records” says Alex Neilson, the five-piece band’s drummer and principal songwriter. “Suffering played quite a big part in its conception. I came out of a relationship and was consoling myself creatively and emotionally by reading a lot of Greek tragedy. The language is incredible. I immersed myself in that and then cherry-picked lines from it, distorting and personalising them.”
The Sovereign Self – named after a line from Dennis Potter, the late television auteur – is the fifth album from Glasgow’s Trembling Bells, their first since 2012’s The Marble Downs, a collaboration with Will Oldham. It is a driving, dramatic and at times hallucinatory work, filled with a great sense of tension and release; a witches’ brew, a psychedelic stew mixing up the range of the band’s musical interests – everything from ramshackled ballads to ancient May Day chants, swaggering acid rock to swirling prog epics.
As always, there is a strong sense of place in songs: Glasgow, Padstow, East London, the Great Western Road; the A61 and A82 – you could plot the songs of Trembling Bells on a chart; you could drive around in them. They are a band poised between mappa mundi and SatNav.
The range of cultural and counter-cultural interest from the band is apparent on the front cover of The Sovereign Self – a series of twenty portraits painted by Lavinia Blackwall: an eclectic gallery of genius from Emily Dickinson to Aeschylus; Lou Reed to Ovid.
Another key influence, psych-folk pioneers the Incredible String Band, has loomed large in the lives of Trembling Bells in recent years. They have toured with ISB co-founder Mike Heron, performing tracks from his songbook.
Having released five cracking LPs in six years, in addition to a number of side-projects, Trembling Bells show no signs of slowing down. Already, work is being done on solo records from three members, and there are plans for an album of reworked traditional folk songs with vocals from comedian Stewart Lee. This is quite simply a group of people with music pouring out of them.
Sovereign Self will be released on 29th June on Tin Angel Records.
Tour dates – more to be announced:
Thursday 25th June – Cube Cinema, Bristol
Friday 26th June – Glastonbury, Bandstand Stage
Sunday 28th June – Leigh Folk Festival, Leigh-on-Sea
Monday 29th June – Colchester Arts Centre, Colchester
Tuesday 30th June – Album launch, Cafe Oto, London (w/ Alasdair Roberts, Family Elan/ Death Shanties)
Wednesday 1st July – Album launch, Cafe Oto, London (w/ Mike Heron, Martin Carthy, Dan Haywood, Crying Lion)
Thursday 2nd July – Wymondham Music Festival, Norfolk
Sunday 5th July- Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
Monday 27th July- Fuse, Bradford
Thursday 30th July- Phoenix, Exeter
Sunday 2nd August- The Bell, Bath
Monday 3rd August- Tin Music & Arts, Coventry
Wednesday 5th August- Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham
Thursday 6th August- The Cellar, Oxford
Friday 7th August- Supernormal Festival, Oxfordshire
Sunday 9th August- Hyde Park Cinema, Leeds
Monday 10th August- The Musician, Leicester
Wednesday 12th August- The Continetal, Preston
Thursday 13th August- Cumberland Arms, Newcastle
Friday 14th August- Glad Cafe, Glasgow
