New Music 2018 - Part 29 - Waterside - Under My Skin

I have long harboured a love for the EP as a means for an artist or band to get early release of their work. In the last decade the format has seen a truly incredible renaissance. This is an astonishing example of what this actually means.

Waterside - Under My Skin EP (self-released, 9 November 2018).

This band and EP happened in the matter of a few months involving four musicians, all studying for music degrees full time, in Leeds. If I'm going to pledge five or ten pounds to back a recording then this is exactly the sort of thing and the only kind of betting that I am willing to countenance. This one, as far as am concerned, is a runaway winner with not a weak track on it. It comprises four tracks:

• On The Floor
• Crow On The Cradle
• Indifference
• Carved By Another II

The choice of cover song, Crow On The Cradle is bold for both its interpretation and for the fact that, in all possibility for many listening it might be their first time of hearing. The original, a Sydney Carter song, was originally recorded by The Ian Campbell Folk Group as the B-side to their 1963 single 'The Sun Is Burning'. Now here is a thing... I wasn't born in 1963.  All four members of Waterside are considerably less than half my age! A product of The Cold War it as been covered fairly often since, particularly more recently. It appears on Lady Maisery's 2013 LP 'Mayday'.
No less impressive is a new version of an Iona Lane song that first appeared on her 2017 EP 'Pockets'. It is a longer, electrified version of 'Carved by Another', which was already the stand-out original song on that release. I fully expect to hear a great deal more from these four artists, jointly and individually, sooner rather than later.