Erland And The Carnival - Was You Ever See

With the ‘f word’ getting banded around indie-dom a lot these days it’s somewhat surprising to get an actual folk record through. If we can get past the grammatical mind-fuck that is the title then we’ve got a reworking of a traditional Welsh song, apparently about an ironmonger who builds a steam engine and the celebration of the opening of it’s corresponding train track.

It’s offbeat material but Erland and the Carnival (comprising of a gent named Erland Cooper, Simon Tong from The Verve and the bloke from The Firemen that wasn’t Paul McCartney at it’s core) treat it very well and turn out a very original sounding piece of music. Instead of just having some strummed acoustic guitars like ever other act that claim to be folk there’s some rather haunting noises coming from some keboards and reverbed electric guitar. It’s an odd juxtaposition for the semi-upbeat chorus but one that works well.

‘Was You Ever See’, being a genuine folk record this is going to have a rather limited audience, and although catchy isn’t an easy listening piece of music. Still, if you’ve not yet been put off Erland and the Carnival, the instrumental passages on this track alone make it a nice piece of vinyl to own.