In the short time that Otherish has been on my radar, I have eagerly looked forward to their releases. Why? Because few bands on the current scene are doing anything remotely this original or adventurous. Too beholden are most artists to record label diktat or listeners’ expectations that they fail to move things forward by crossing the demarcations or attempting to do things differently. After all, who wants to be seen as being musical mavericks in these times of conformity and complacency?
Well, Otherish, for one. And When I Was You is the proof. This is the fourth album of original music from the “triangulated quartet” (i.e. four members spread between those three iconic music cities, namely, Belfast, Bristol and …umm…Frome), and as always, it is a set of songs that mix and merge and meld sounds and styles, scenes and eras and genres.
Opener, “Yonder Thon” brilliantly signals some of those attractive opposites at work. It is a gently folky piece running on skittering beats, spacious sonics, orchestral touches, and gorgeously adventurous vocals. Songs such as “Goldenhair” feel like the start of an ancient music revival. By contrast, “Used Up Useless Useful Idiot” has a *Bowie-ish” quality to it, whilst the punnish “The Custard Pi Attempt” (played in 3.14 time, apparently) wanders into sonic realms that perhaps only Otherish themselves have yet visited, a sort of warped pop-rock piece, part sixties vibe, part futuristic soundscore, part Otherishness.
There is even room for one of the essential songs from the Great Irish Songbook, “My Lagan Love”, a poem-song that has been covered by everyone from Van the Man to Sweet Lady Kate (Bush, that is) from The Chieftains to Hozier and here presented in a very traditional Celtic folk balladic form.
Just to keep you guessing (why bother, just go with the flow), this is followed by “Summer in Belfast 2098”, a bubbling, groovesome pop piece, but pop as only Otherish could envisage it, somehow subdued and subtle whilst still being infectious and boogiesome. Weird!
But for me, above and beyond this musical creativity, or at least equal to it, is the brilliant lyricism and numerous literary and artistic reference points. Walking through the songs, you find everyone and everything from James Joyce to Les Entartistes, the super-rich and the super-smart, the everyday and the occultist, an echo of the past and a vision of the future.
They are a conundrum, that’s for sure. You can generally identify the sonic elements that make up their music; there is plenty that is familiar to be found in their choice of building blocks: folk finesse, pop groove, rock ornateness, post-punk creativity, as well as a few ancient sonic tongues or futuristic musical predictions. But it is how they assemble all these moving parts into new sonic architecture that is the real joy here.
