The Daily Growl

Here’s something rather good that came my way the other day and shows me again that it’s often worth following up these emails that constantly pop into my inbox. Obviously people can tell what I like by looking at what I post about here (that doesn’t include the folks who sent me Celine Dion CDs obviously), but this guy has nailed it very nicely indeed. It was the mention of Fence Records and Amiina in the email that perked my curiosity.

Rob St John is originally from Lancashire but now resides in Edinburgh. His is a particularly lovely folk music, backed up by cello, harmonium and even the saw. There definitely aren’t enough saws in music today. Between Rob and Amiina, that’s two saw instrumentation-related posts in the past couple of weeks. Good going.

He claims to be “influenced by the music and lyricism of Vashti Bunyan, Joanna Newsom, Bert Jansch and Bill Callahan, the imagery and black humour of Dylan Thomas and Ivor Cutler, and a general desire to see the magic in life’s minutiae.” This may be true, but I’m hearing a lot of echoes of Daily Growl faves and Fence Collective artistes James Yorkston and Adrian Crowley, and little bits of other Scots folkie Alasdair Roberts.

Speaking of collectives, Rob’s also a member of the Fife Kills: collective, a label and erm, collective of musicians in and around Edinburgh and Fife who seem to pursue a nice line in folky stuff. A rival to Fence perhaps? Probably not, there’s surely infinite capacity in the Kingdom for bands of acoustic minstrels.

Anyway, it’s all good stuff. Rob’s new EP Tipping In comes out on 10 December and should be available as 100 strictly limited and numbered copies, through Fife Kills: records. It will be available at some independent record shops: Elvis Shakespeare and Avalanche (Edinburgh), Monorail (Glasgow), Townsend (Clitheroe) and Rough Trade (London). Here are a couple of tracks

Download: Rob St John – Tipping In
Download: Rob St John – A Wooden Rose

You can see Rob playing at the aforementioned Elvis Shakespeare shop on Leith Walk, Edinburgh on 14 December and some other dates on his myspace.