Over the past two and a half years of this blog, I've never had a track by track review. Instead you've had to listen to my ramblings on certain albums that I've reviewed over the years. Instead this time round, I've asked songwriter D. King, lead chieftain of Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo to talk about their forthcoming album On The Desolate Hillside. The album comes out via Wiseblood Industries on 29th August via digital download and hand crafted CD, and features the production of Robbie Lesiuk and Adam Stafford, as well as the vocals and lyrics of D. King.
1. The Weather Report is Grim and Dark
An ensemble piece. The men of the village have gathered together (after sacrificing the village goat) to sing at the top of their lungs, to drive away the summer sun. Edwin Morgan commemorates the even in poem form.
2. The Solitary Rabbit
Through the method of hypnotic regression, Mr D. King recounts a previous life as an outcast rabbit on Bunny Island (just off junction 4 of the M9). Alienation, impotence and a low sperm count are celebrated in this song.
3. Fashionable Buddhas
This being a paean to the middle classes and the religious deities they rush to worship. The almighty godhead is not amused. Prepare for a smiting.
4. Hell is Awaiting
For Eric Joyce and his unscrupulous ilk. May the bankers, wankers and deviants that have dragged the country through the mud suffer an eternity of hot, burny fire and pokey, jaggy sticks. Fuckers.
5. Great Trees, Social Bees (World Transforming)
Pollen distribution and trees. Simple!
6. Anomie Encumbrance
A failure in domestic hygiene causes confusion, causing social collapse and depraved sexual deviancy. If only I had cleaned out the cake bowl properly.
7. Mappin
A song about Margaret Thatcher's destruction of the welfare state, written in the influence of hardcore German pornography.
8. Break These Chains
Bound and weighed down are we by the chains of our history and deoxyribonucleic acid of our family tree. Must we, like Prometheus of old, be tied to the rock of fate, our liver being plucked out by the eagles of neglect?
9. Solemn As A Song
It is unusual to find a room in an abandoned house with bolt on the outside. What unfathomable cruelty went on behind that door? What sound echoes around those walls? Someone should write a solemn song about it.
10. On The Desolate Hillside
Abandoned by the local goat murderers, the ghost of Edwin Morgan discovers the flyblown and bleached remains on a desolate hillside above the town. It is his first love, it is his lost love. He's getting a bit sloppy in the disposal of his victims. Must try harder!
There is a launch for the album on Saturday 24th August downstairs in the 13th Note Cafe. Find out more details on the Facebook event page here.
