“I don’t think you’ll hear another rock album like this all year….” Says Virginmarys singer guitarist Ally Dickaty on an interview he did to coincide with this record.
Big talk, maybe, and if I am totally honest, the type of PR guff that I usually ignore. Frankly, the day a band sends me an email that says: “Hi, here’s our new one, it’s not as good as some of our stuff, but have a listen.” It’ll be a first.
But the thing about The Virginmarys is there has always been an element to them that set them apart from other rock bands.
I remember going to see them a few years ago. I loved their debut “King Of Conflict” record (produced by Toby Jepson, hence my interest in the first place) and the crowd…..well lets just say I felt a along way from home. I was in my usual band tshirt, and I was surrounded by people who weren’t at the shows I went to usually.
This was a band with more than a genuine crossover potential, but a band that were genuine outsiders. Doing their own thing, proudly from Macclesfield, not Manchester, they carried with them the desire to stick a middle finger up to the big cities and the big budgets.
Last year’s “Sitting Ducks” EP marked a change to a 2-piece. Bassist Matt left, and what emerged took them in a different direction. It was something of a surprise, when I got “Northern Sun Sessions” and found it had circled back to the sound of the debut and the even better “Divides” – but even more that it had done so with the inherent rawness that all the best duos have.
From the opening hook of “Look Out For My Brother” this is an album that does massive on its own terms. And a searing honesty to the lyrics too. “I smoked so much it dried my eyes out, I drank so much that I grew fins” is how Dickaty chooses to elucidate his small-town frustration here.
“SOS4UNI” is another that has huge intentions, but they’ve not smoothed the edges off. Instead, it recalls all the bands I used to love in the 90s, and there is something of the angular riffage of Therapy? here too as Dickaty roars the lyrics rather than singing them.
Two-piece bands, obviously these days are going to get lazy comparisons to Royal Blood, but the wonderful “Eye For An Eye” not only invites them but positively embraces them, while the bleakness that lurks beneath the surface – the nihilism if you like – rises up on “For The Two Of Us” and it is striking how heavy (in all senses of the word) this record is.
“Blind Lead The Blind” which sums up the plight of the populace up thus: “its an endless march where the blind lead the blind in the dark” exemplifies the feeling throughout, but it builds to a crescendo that suggests there might be light at the end of the tunnel.
Perhaps the pick of them is the primal rage of blues that is “Get Me Back Home” that thrashes around as if lives depend on it – and they just might given the make or break feel here – the title track, broods away and navigates its way through some dark places, while the interesting rhythms and sounds on “Wanna Be Free” are perhaps indicative of the chances being taken here.
“Flags” comes in with one of the most striking first lines anywhere: “six years sober I am still hungover” and perhaps these demons are what drove the band throughout, certainly they are driving the thing here.
There’s even a foray into punkish waters for “Step Up” which fair old explodes with rage by its chorus, and whilst “Northern Sun Sessions” deals with real life rather than that of the metropolitan elite, it is not hard to view this – and many of the others – in a political context. The state of this union is broken. It knows it.
The record ends with another big, brooding ballad. “I’m giving all I’ll ever have,” says “All Fall Down” and there is little doubt that this is the album that The Virginmarys have poured more of themselves into than any other. But perhaps if you were looking to sum “Northern Sun Sessions” up, you’d be best looking at a line right at the end of the second verse of the first track: “its not the high life,” suggests the line. “but its my life, and I’m living it.”
And in so doing it speaks for everyone, more than this vile Tory government we have ever will, more than the rich, the powerful and every other piece of scum that tells you that the poor going to food banks is uplifting. That – and being an absolutely brilliant record – is why you won’t hear another rock album like this all year.
Rating 9/10
NORTHERN SUN SESSIONS IS RELEASED ON 16TH NOVEMBER
