Larsen B, Musketeer Album Review
Naming your band after a collapsed Ice Shelf that was then subsequently remembered in a British Sea Power song might seem contrived enough. This album, the follow up their previous 2 EP's, delivered over the past 3 years, is a very English record that on first glance could be a humorous Brit remake of the Nicholson classic, The Postman Always Rings Twice. This time, however, the setting is somewhere more akin to Greendale and the subtitle to it reads, 'Musketeer, The Postman always sings twice!'
Three Hertfordshire men have gone to the stables in Wheathampstead and recruited the odd passerby, as well as encountering the occasional flicker, courtesy of resident ghostly inhabitants. Will, Simon & Paddy could be accused of having at least one foot firmly in the past, even the album cover is from an Edward Hicks painting of 1833. Quaker Icon he may be but it doesn't help when comparisons drawn to Fleet Foxes in musical direction could also be levelled through art depicting proverbs, Fleet Foxes having chosen a Pieter Bruegel from 1559. It's orchestrated folk with waltzing thrown in for good measure charmingly delivered with a very English sensibility and character. The Divine Comedy done not by Neil Hannon but maybe Simon Callow.
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