Sit on This

Park Bench Social Club

The Park Bench Social Club met whilst studying for a music degree at Newcastle University. These three talented guys didn't take long to gel into a tight fiery unit and record this highly distinctive debut.

We've got their studies to thank for these fellahs getting together at all as geographically they're a mixed bunch. Ross Couper the fiddle player is from Shetland, Aidan Curran, the guitarist/vocals, from Canada and Will Lang who handles percussion hails from Bristol.

The diverse playing makes for a truly heady brew and it will only takes the opening track to convince anyone this isn't some college course experiment. For the first 418 seconds we're plunged into one of the most magical starts to an album I've heard for a long time. It's comprised of four instrumental tunes with a trad feel, two of them being from Ross' pen. The fiddle is coruscating as the melodies accelerate, getting us caught on their barbed twists and turns. If the gameplan was to their hooks into us early, it's working.

The album is interspersed with more cascading fiddle jigs and rumbling bodhran but then this recording is set apart by it's ability to surprise with a selection of trad numbers of a different kind. 'Cuckoo' and 'Little Sadie' are a delight with Aidan's pinpoint picking to the fore whilst he belts out the lyrics like an excitable Doc Watson.

Aidan's own numbers comfortably sit alongside the established material and benefit from none other than Eliza Carthy. The pick of the album is 'Weighing Up The Risks' with Eliza obviously revelling in the moment.

Is it because of the easy accessibility of music these days that the younger musicians seem to have such a good overview and then be able to blend such disparate styles so seamlessly?

All I know is this melting pot of an album is about as catchy as music can get. There's a grittiness to this sound that's exhilarating and a passion driving these boys that's simply infectious.

David Kushar