‘Postcards’ is the second album from weird and brilliant
West Yorkshire trio The Housekeeping Society, following
2011’s oddball debut, ‘This Way to Power’. If you’ve heard
that album, or been lucky enough to catch one of their
mesmerising live sets, you’ll have some idea what you’re in
for. If not... well, describing them might be a bit tricky.
They’re not normal, you see, the Housekeepers. Quite aside from
their decidedly odd moniker, they produce music that pings with
wit and invention, bounding gleefully from one musical style to
another whilst never losing focus on a sound that is, distinctly, and
for want of a better word... Housekeepy. You might want to call it
folk music: earthy, organic tones dominated by guitar, piano and
ukelele, breathing in time with the yearnings of its characters.
But then these are also pop songs, with canny, vibrant hooks and
melodies that seep unnoticed into the background chatter of your
mind and hum away all day.
We start with a journey to the seaside, as opening track The Coast
Is Clear builds a rhythm around the chugging of a steam train that
develops into a wide-eyed, playful hymn to the joys of getting
away from it all. From this point on we will never be far from the
beach, swooping through the lives of holidaymakers, locals, bed
and breakfast owners and seafarers, as the fortunes of the holiday
industry ebb and swell through the years. The tone shifts from
vaudevillian whimsy (Seaside Mystery
Man) to wistful melancholy (the
achingly beautiful Ghosts), taking in
romance, nostalgia and even a little
social commentary along the way.
Shot through all this, like letters
through a stick of rock, is a real sense
of time and place. The album tastes
of salt and candy-floss, thanks in no
small part to the layering of location
recording from the North Coast, often sequenced into the rhythms
of the tracks by percussionist Ivan Mack.
There are two or three tracks that stand out quite quickly. End Of
The Pier is energetic and poppy, with a frenzied electronic bass-line
under swooping strings and a soaring lead vocal by Ric Neale that
would make Morten Harket’s ears prick up. The plaintive, delicate
voice of Spencer Bayles, meanwhile, lends an ethereal sadness to
You, Me And The Swell Of The Sea. Most moving of all, and for this
reviewer the highlight of the album, is the Neale penned Still. In
this ballad we hear the prayers of a woman widowed by the sea,
wondering how the God who moves over the face of the water could
let it happen. A powerful lyric over a haunting piano signature, the
song burrows deeper with every listen.
There are many other treasures here. Suitcase is either funny
or heartbreaking depending on your mood, as the titular item
of luggage laments an increasingly one-sided love affair with its
owner. And closing track The Seaside’s Been Shut Down sees nothing
wrong with being both sing-a-long melodic perfection and a terribly
sad curtain drawn on the world
we have been celebrating.
The whole album, in fact,
plays on the tension between
the joy of the present and the
pain of the past, finding both
beauty and sadness in the
fading world of the sea front.
This is reflected not only in the
carefully crafted lyrics and eclectic instrumentation, but also in
the gorgeous cover art. Created by Jean McEwan and Robert Hope,
the sleeve design evokes in image what the album does in sound:
seaside landscapes, slipping out of focus into abstract, pastel
memory. On the cover a childlike scribble of a house soars through
the air, carried by zeppelin over a defocused seafront. Hope and
bittersweet nostalgia at the same time, Postcards is something to
write home about.
Rob Reed
For more information about The Housekeeping Society visit
“From this point on we will never
be far from the beach, swooping
through the lives of holidaymakers,
locals, bed and breakfast owners
and seafarers, as the fortunes of
the holiday industry ebb and swell
through the years.”
