Kes
The Grey Goose Wing
16 Track, LP (2007, Mistletone)
Related: Kes.
Kes. Named, presumably, after the classic Ken Loach film, based on the Barry Hines novel, in which a half-starved dreamy youngster has his hopes – and his beloved kestrel bird – strangled by the grim Yorkshire mining town that he’s growing up in.
And Kes (the songwriter, also the band) sound a bit like young winged hope, too: slightly wobbly on their feet, but more than capable of gusting upwards with delicious unpredictability. Sometimes there’s the bulk of an empty mountainside echoing back from between their blown recorder notes, like on opener ‘One Seventeen’, which is revisited as a melancholic, reversed-tape piano interlude at the album’s three-quarter mark. Or there’s ‘The Grey Goose Wing (Recorders)’, where you can practically trace a gentle valley breeze. Other times those same instruments squawk with a surprisingly endearing, stubborn-faced confidence, in slap-dash harmony with vocals (including guests Paddy Mann and Laura Jean) content to wander far from any main melodic current.
Despite the folkish atmosphere, this isn’t a delicate record; it’s far more self-possessed than that. For those who display a habitual sourness towards open, joyful experimentation, The Grey Goose Wing will curdle your milk. For the rest of us, it’s safe to say that Kes don’t sound like any other Australian band around. They don’t sound bored, they don’t sound tired, they certainly don’t sound straight-jacketed by trying to catch their own reflections in the nearest mirror. And that’s a very good thing.
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