Album Review

Various – Exclamation At Asterisk Hash

• 13th Jul 2009

Exclamation At Asterisk Hash is a recession-friendly split record from baby DIY label Broken Tail Records, who hope we’ll find it “more rewarding than listening to The Corrs or drinking Coors”.

Yes, they’ve cleverly found a word that doubles for both a mediocre Irish girl band (sorry) and the nation’s least favourite beer, but they’ve also set the bar for Exclamation At Asterisk Hash extremely (and undeservingly) low, as the only thing less rewarding than listening to The Coors or drinking Coors is doing both at the same time, because Exclamation At Asterisk Hash is well worth a listen.

It’s a collection of contemporary country/alt-country tracks from three musicians – and their acoustic guitars, natch. Jim Lockey and the Solemn Sun kick off the album with Waitress, a classic whiskey-soaked country lament that ends (as it should) with the sort of barn-stompin’ tempo change that makes line dancers dizzy, while final track Atlases shows off Lockey’s knack with a pop melody and a glockenspiel.

The standout track from Oxygen Thief is third track There Can Only Be One. It’s an anti-love song (“I think I’m gonna ignore your advances/ I will be civilised about this”) melded to the kind of feverish, yelping, punk-country that bands like duo Brakes do so well.

Marwood’s contribution to Exclamation At Asterisk Hash is the least successful, for the simple reason that his voice doesn’t stand up quite as well to the simple backing arrangements. On the fourth track I Will Breathe You In, while there’s no denying the boy can hit the high notes he’s less convincing with the, erm, gravelly bits. Nonetheless it’s the sort of summery acoustic pop ballad you stumble upon by mistake at Glastonbury, and kick yourself for forgetting who sung it.

Exclamation At Asterisk Hash won’t be topping the NME’s cool list any time soon, but hey, nobody said that’s a bad thing. For a split album from a fledgling record label, it marks Lockey in particular as one to watch. Oh, and the sleevenotes also told me that by reading to the end I’d become 3% more attractive. Now where’s that bottle of Coors?