Tilly And The Wall - Bottoms Of Barrels

Starting an album with what sounds like the musical act Stomp, joined with a tambourine and several other percussion instruments you may have been given to practice with at school combined with whiney vocals doesn’t sound like the best way to start an album. It isn’t. Tilly and the Wall’s ‘Patience, Babe’ is the worst song on an otherwise terrific album, and it could be enough to put people off hearing the rest of ‘Bottoms of Barrels’. This opening song is actually missed off the American release and the US version starts off with ‘Rainbows In The Dark’, a less avant-garde, more breezy, and ultimately much better song.

‘Bad Education’ is a brilliant Spanish-style, upbeat number, with sharp rhythms and great vocals, while ‘Love Song’ is a beautiful ballad displaying Derek Presnall’s vocal talents. He is also the main vocal on ‘Coughing Colours’, a brilliant piano-backed easy track, showing that it isn’t just the female vocals of Neely Jenkins and Kianna Alarid that stand out.

‘Bottoms of Barrels’ certainly isn’t boring, but mixes genres like 60’s pop, indie and folk, and lyrics range from the cheesy ‘let us be free’ to extravagant lines like ‘diamond teardrops fall out of crocodile eyes’.

This is a lavish, colourful album that can alter from inspired to disappointing with the changing of a track, and like a piece of modern art you know it has beauty and a part of the artist’s soul attached to it, but at times you just wonder ‘what were they thinking?’.