If you’ve been paying attention at Northampton’s outdoor festivals over the past couple of years then you have probably heard the sound of the Canyons.
It’s a noise that real things make: actual strings and drums shaking the air right in front of you played by a bunch of grizzled old troubadours who look like they have lived the lemons that made this lemonade.
I think of them as The Flaming Travelling Water Wilburys – the point in the tuniverse at which The Flaming Lips crossover with The Waterboys and The Travelling Wilburys.
Who would have thought such a thing was possible, let alone that it should come to pass in our beloved borough? And yet here we are breathing the same air that carries their country blues pop riffs on lazy summer afternoons on the Racecourse, in Beckett’s Park or at The Pomfret.
Their latest outing was Barneyfest in Flore over the weekend but if you missed it there is now a suitably old school way to capture the magic – a new album on CD entitled Garage Palace.
The name is a bit of serendipity. The cover photo on the recording was taken some time ago at Cabourg and the wording was already there, capturing a certain kind of salty no-nonsense romanticism that fits the vibe of the band.
There is a lot of self-deprecating wit running through Garage Palace. In Bodies we hear a story about ‘moving bodies for money’ which in a way, is something that musicians do and in A Night In Pompey the authentic voice of songwriter Stevie Ward shines through: ‘you booked the tickets wrong, I was fucking fuming for a while’.
Meanwhile Burn It Down is old man anger – I don’t mean an angry old man – I mean man anger that would have been recognisable to the perpetrators of the Peasant’s Revolt.
Black Hosannas is a truly chilling invitation to the wedding from hell and one of my favourites but songs like Half Moon and It’s The Living That Kills Us sparkle with uplifting alt-country magic.
You may know the Canyons musicians for other reasons: by day Mr Ward runs the legendary St Giles Cheese and Guy Fletcher teaches at Northampton College.
However if you are interested in finding out more about their musical shenanigans then you can sample Garage Palace below via the Bandcamp app…
