New Music 2012 - Part 1 - Phantom Limb - The Pines

Where better to start than with this?  'The Pines', released in the UK on February 13, is the second studio album by Bristol-based Phantom Limb and the follow up to their 2008 eponymous début. The more recently released 'Live In Bristol' only me makes me want to hear this LP more, and then live once again.

It has long escaped me why Phantom Limb is not already better known. This, I would like to think, is the album that will finally make amends for there is nothing even two-dimensional about the whole deal: A remarkable vocalist for sure, but most importantly a band that is supremely able to cope with the considerable demands she places on them. Better still is the song-writing and the arrangement is top-drawer.

  

February 9, 2012.

The reviewer at The Independent (London) seems to like it too...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-phantom-limb-the-pines-naim-edge-6699396.html

Withering Bones - and other lyric considerations

I have promised far more lyrics than I have delivered, particularly recently, and I am well aware of this shortcoming. This is my best attempt at one, the detail of which still defeats me, that has been asked after more than a few times...  In this case I really, really would like some help here.  It is a song from the self-titled début LP from a band that I sincerely hope we will hear more of in 2011. I know that they have been working (at least in part in LA) on their second during 2010 and that band is 'Phantom Limb'.

Withering Bones
  
I don't want to fade into withering bones
No, I don't want to die alone
But I won't be pulled asunder by a mean old lover
So I guess I'll be waiting on the stone.
  
I don't want the thorns without the rose
No, I don't want to die in vain
I'm gonna buy my family a house in the country
So I guess I'll be waiting for that day.


What comes after this I am quite unsure about, even though I have heard it performed live on at least three occasions...  I'm not convinced that it is not, at least to some extent, variable ad-lib when performed live and that is perfectly reasonable.  The real problem is that I can't figure the album version with any degree of confidence either.  I can persuade myself of the veracity of various versions but in no sense am I confident in any of them; let alone in choosing a particular one from amongst them.
It is a great song - one of the highlights on a vastly under-rated album - but I have to admit defeat by Yolanda Quarty's song writing and vocals on this one, at least for now.

Phantom Limb

Spending much of Sunday afternoon in the pub is pretty decadent, and something I very rarely do, but I have to say that The Griffin is in my opinion the best pub in Frome, which has quite a few to choose from, and not least because it has its own on-site brewery. In this instance it was simply the music that clinched it!
This Bristol-based six-piece have been stirring up favourable comment since SXSW 2008, and thus a Glastonbury booking on the Jazz/World Stage, where their largely acoustic southern soul/blues caused quite a stir. It also resulted in a record deal with Irish label Naim Edge. The really impressive thing is their innate virtuosity. Their début album comprises only original compositions, recorded and mastered in Bristol and Monmouth, and was released on August 25, 2008. The vinyl release, also mastered and cut in Bristol, is to follow on September 15, 2008.

The Griffin was far too crowded to take any worthwhile photos, given that it is not huge and Phantom Limb are a six-piece band so that takes up space, but the music was quite amazing. Lead vocalist Yolanda Quarty also provides about half the vocals on the forthcoming Massive Attack album, and has toured worldwide with the same, but trip-hop this is not and they could well lose her to this project, for which she also writes the majority of the lyrics, simply because her voice and the musicians suit the material so well.

The band is something approaching a Bristol 'super-group' and it seems oddly fitting that one of Bristol's premier music venues is a pub called The Louisiana. Check out the album:

1. Don't Say A Word
2. Withering Bones
3. I'll Never Be The Same
4. My Love Has Gone
5. Playing With Death
6. Run
7. Good Fortune
8. We Will Carry
9. Spring Flowers
10. The Hard Way

This is the track list but I couldn't tell you which ones that I like most as I simply haven't decided yet, and when I do I'll probably change my mind.