Dungeness

"It's still rare to hear a folk artist strain at the leash, bare their teeth. Enter Trembling Bells, one decade and six albums old, about to enter adolescence with a glint in the eye. Still pivoting around the wild writing and playing of singing drummer, Alex Neilson (recently the percussionist on Shirley Collins's Lodestar) and the extraordinary soprano of Lavinia Blackwall, Trembling Bells have always sounded quite beholden to their late 1960s influences, recreating Fairport Convention's longing loveliness or the Incredible String Band's whimsy without whipping up something of their own. But Dungeness plunges us into louder, darker territories. Named after the shingly Kent headland to which the band made a trip, Neilson said the place felt like the end of the world, and this album's themes follow suit. The music is a mixture of avant-garde racket and crossover doom-pop potential - fans of PJ Harvey, Nick Cave or Nadine Shah will find entertainments here".

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"Here is a band drunk on music, with the desire to play it all at once and the talent to actually pull it off. Can all that momentum and chutzpah stop the wheels coming off, as so many influences are absorbed and threaten to topple things over? If the current output levels are kept up, we'll find out soon enough - but what a glorious crash that would be".

"Trembling Bells channel the malevolence and beauty of Dungeness for a fine new LP ... Transcending the folk rock genre has long been a feature of Trembling Bells' work over the past ten years. The range of the band's music has been matched by an impressive consistency in quality, and this latest release is a first rate representation of older, but definitely not olde worlde, and more contemporary styles of composition".

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