The Accidental: There Were Wolves

By: Dennis Cook

“Dream For Me,” “Time And Space,” “Slice Open The Day” – The Accidental are not philosophically shy. But, where one might expect a Polyphonic Spree-ly treatise on kindness, love, etc. what you get is a welcoming “do-da-da-da,” the simple beat of acoustic guitar and endless beguilement. The Accidental draw you in with a flip of their hair – flirtations open to interpretation, a murmured speech where doors open and close and one’s legs go missing. Though the word “psychedelic” has largely become a generic placeholder for reverb nostalgia, it’s the one that fits here. This is a peculiar, charming heartbeat that beckons us to lay our ear upon their chest.

There were wolves lying in the dark
As she was raining sparks into the room like that
She was dancing in a neon cave with a tilted smile and a lover’s laugh
Embossed upon her in the darkness
Like a light at the edge of night beside her
And as the drugs get in their heads they growl and circle at the edge beside her

Listing their influences as “the sun, the moon and the stars,” Stephen Cracknell (The Memory Band), Sam Genders (Tunng), singer-songwriter Liam Bailey and Hannah Caughlin (The Bicycle Thieves) have distilled some extra virgin oil for the imagination – slippery and viscous and oozing into the seams of things. There’s a sense that each piece is operating on a lot of different levels, some of which we may not get at all without an appreciation of suggestion and subtlety. Take the evocative lyric for “Wolves” above. Though evocative as a fable, it’s roots are far more common.

“It’s about blokes yearning for girls who seem to have magical powers and exist on a higher plane than them,” says Genders. “So they get drunk and hunt in packs and some of them treat the girls like prey and some of them are just trying to find the courage to say hello. I always imagine it being set in the local nightclub in my home village of Matlock Bath in Derbyshire, the Pav. That’s the neon cave where she’s spinning in the scarlet dress. It’s about every friday night in the Pav. Or any friday night in any town.”

The new collective brings the pleasures of their other projects in but in unobvious ways, sprinkling folk and outright experimentation with a gentle heat, a campfire aglow rather than throwing tall flames. Inescapably English in tone, The Accidental nod to forebears like John Martyn, Beta Band, Bert Jansch and other warpers of soft six-strings and watery electronics (The Bevis Frond springs to mind on “Jaw of a Whale”). But, There Were Wolves (released June 3 on Thrill Jockey) is never lazy or overly dreamy, moving ahead with quiet purpose, carving lace patterns in their slow pulsing smoke. This is ideal morning or wee-wee hour music, where the musicians sidle up beside us and dispel our loneliness, sending our thoughts gently outwards, loosened from these earthly bonds for a brief spell.

JamBase | Free
Go See Live Music!