BUTCHER BOY - HELPING HANDS

Nearly 12 months after the band finished recording the songs in a Glasgow studio, the much anticipated third LP from Butcher Boy is released by Damaged Goods on Monday 29 August. 

The previous two albums - Profit In Your Poetry and React Or Die - had been released by How Does It Feel To Be Loved, but that has become much more of a vehicle for club nights and events rather than releasing and promoting records.  As a result, Butcher Boy, having paid for the recording themselves, with a bit of support from the agency Creative Scotland, were able to look around and find a home where they felt comfortable and one which would give the right amount of support to a band who, after all, are comprised of highly talented musicians who hold down day jobs in other, and often demanding, professions.  They are far from being a full-time musical combo.....

The first thing that strikes you about Helping Hands is that it comes exquisitely packaged in comparison to its predecessors, with a 16-page illustrated booklet complete with lyrics. You can sense the band's ambition has risen manifestly before you even put the disc into the player. 

And as you listen, you very quickly realise it is way different from the previous releases....where those were for the most part guitar-focused indie-pop records with added strings, Helping Hands has loads of surprises.  There's a lot more prominence given to the cello of Maya Burnam-Roy and the piano and keys of Alison Eales.  There's a bit of electronica as well with synths and drum machines. 

Those of us lucky enough to have seen the band live over the past couple of years will be familiar with quite a few of the tracks - there's 12 in total of which three are instrumentals and first came to prominence when the main songwriter John Blain Hunt scored three silent black and white movies from the 1950s that had been made by Enricco Cocozza at a special show at the Glasgow Film Theatre in June 2009. 

One of those instrumentals  - J is For Jamie opens the album and fulfills the purpose of providing you with an entertaining and upbeat short overture as you settle down into your seat. 

The next four songs - The Day Our Voices Broke, Helping Hands, Imperial and Bluebells are among the best things the band has ever done.  Two of them (Voices and Imperal) are great indie-pop tunes that will have you dancing while the other two are beautiful love songs which provide enormous evidence of the quantum leap made by Butcher Boy in 2010 and 2011. 

Helping Hands begins as a piano-led ballad which shows off  John's excellent vocal talents. Gradually more and more instruments join the fray. There's an orchestral interlude about halfway through and then the ballad recommences but you can sense it is building up to something special.  Something special which comes in the closing section as the tempo changes and the instrumentation kicks in to full effect.  I've listened to the closing section of Helping Hands time and time and time again this past 24 hours.  It just gets me right there (I'm punching my heart as I type this...) with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.  It is quite simply, one of the most gorgeous bits of music ever recorded by anyone....if I've one grumble is that I'd have loved the track to have lasted about another minute or so longer......

I didn't fully appreciate Bluebells the first time I heard it.  It is one of the songs that wasn't aired in the run of live shows at the tail end of 2010 so I'm not as familiar with it as I am with many of the others.  I initially thought it was just a bit run-of-the mill certainly in comparison to the songs immediately preceding it.  Then I listened closely and realised it's damn near perfect thanks to Basil Pieroni's easy-going guitar playing....dare I say it, there's a fair bit of it reminds me of The Go-Betweens when they used to slow things down.....and I can give no higher praise.  The first half of the LP is then closed with the short and lovely instrumental T Is For Tommy.

There's more welcome surprises in the second half with Parliament Hill having a folk-tinge to it and I Am The Butcher being as uptempo as anything they've ever recorded.  Whistle And I Will Come To You is another slowy......and believe it or not musically it reminds me of Kate Bush......it really is totally different from anything else Butcher Boy have ever done.  And it is stunning.

Tracks 10 and 11  - Russian Dolls and Your Cousins And I  - are again among those that weren't been played at the live shows last year which is a shame as they are two marvellously uptempo tracks that will be of particular appeal to anyone who loved the first two LPs.....with the rhythm section of Fraser Ford, Findlay Mackinnon and Robert Spark very much to the fore (as they always are in the live shows)

The whole thing is closed off with a bit of music that has been kicking around for a fair bit of time now, first being made available via You Tube back in December 2009.  Every Other Saturday is proof that John Blain Hunt could make a tremendous film composer if he turned his hand to it......

As I said at the outset, this record has been just about ready for release for the best part of a year now.  The wait has however, been more than worth it.    Butcher Boy just keep getting better and better and better.  Helping Hands is as good as anything I have in my collection, which translates as it being one of the best records of the past 35 years since I first started buying vinyl.  But as Morrissey might say, Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself by clicking here and ordering Helping Hands for the ridiculously low price of £8.99 direct from Damaged Goods.

Oh and any of you lucky enough to be attending the Indietracks Festival this coming weekend (29-31 July), do yourselves an enormous favour and catch Butcher Boy's live performance.  I wish I could be there with you................

mp3 : Butcher Boy - Imperial

Alison, Fraser, John, Findlay, Basil, Maya and Robert - the 21st Century equivalent of The Magnificent 7....

Happy Listening