Rough Trade Album Of The Month February 2015 – The Districts “A Flourish And A Spoil”

Here’s the pick that I mentioned in my earlier post. It’s “A Flourish and A Spoil” by The Districts. It was Rough Trade’s album of the month in February of this year. This is a monthly subscription whereby you get either a “surprise” CD, MP3 or LP plus MP3 dependent on what you prefer and what you are prepared to spend. I explained why I particularly enjoy the service and previewed the Districts in this post.

They aren’t a band that I was familiar with. They have a track “Funeral Beds” on the Rough Trade Counter Culture 14 which I had heard, enjoyed but it hadn’t stood out especially. The album arrived in early February in a rather fetching marbled pink vinyl with a  bonus CD of 4 additional exclusive tracks. It’s a rather traditional rock offering by Rough Trade’s standards, but grows to reveal other layers. It’s on Fat Possum – home to RL Burnside and the Black Keys in the early days. You can see a definite kinship with the Black Keys.

The band themselves are young. They are from Lititz, which is about 100km east of Philadelphia. They have moved to Philly now and seem to be taking to big city life.  They met in high school and have a tight but loose sound that growing up together seems to be influencing. Talking of influences, one can hear any number of recent successful guitar bands. They know their way around some 9th and minor 7th chords in the way that Arctic Monkeys do a number of tunes, such as “When The Sun Goes Down“. They’ve got the fire of early Kings of Leon when they had long hair and were worth bothering with. “4th and Roebling” in particular brings the Strokes to mind (again when they were worth bothering with).

Then you hear a little more…. Older influences  come to the fore – the urgency of Creedance Clearwater Revival, the soul of the Band.

Young Blood is the centre piece – dynamic, dramatic, stretching out. This is a live version

So I’m growing to like it. Each play reveals something else which is never a bad thing.

I’ve received the March album which is the new Matthew E White album, Fresh Blood.

I’m approaching it with open ears having not fallen in love with his debut album the way that some people had. My first listens suggest that it is a more focused song based album than his debut. He produced one of my favourite records of the year so far, which was released on his Spacebomb label, which is Natalie Prass’s self titled album.

Ms Prass sang backing vocals on the Andrew Combs album and has a lovely Dusty-esque voice. Here she is at the Lexington recently, a gig which I heard was wonderful from a friend of mine.

Until next time……… PS Click through the highlighted links for more stuff