Album Review

Randolph’s Leap – Randolph’s Leap and the Curse of the Haunted Headphones

• 24th Feb 2012

Glasgow folk/ pop band Randolph’s Leap have released a rather unusual album on the Peenko Records label. For a start it is only available in two formats: digital download and limited edition cassette.

Yes, cassette. Which is great if you still have a cassette player around. And given the home production vibe of the music, I have a feeling that it will probably sound best on an old fashioned cassette tape.

The music is very much stripped down from Randolph’s Leap’s normal live performances. There are eight members of the band, but I’m pretty sure that they didn’t all play on these songs. The sound comes largely from the acoustic guitar and vocals of frontman Adam Ross, with occasional drums, recorder, fiddle and keyboards added in here and there.

The opening Sunday Morning sets the scene for the album nicely. The tape hiss is audible as Ross delivers the song with, initially at least, just his guitar for backing. The odd drum beat keeps time and the pace increases before a retro sounding keyboard solo ends the track. The lo-fi feel nicely reflects the melancholy of the lyrics.

There are fifteen tracks on the album in all, although many of them are only two minutes or so long. And three of them come in at less than a minute; just rather odd little snippets of songs really.

Randolph Leap’s songwriting is good, with the lyrics often containing elements of sharp humour that are at times downright funny and at others displaying a real pathos. I’m sure that they don’t take things entirely seriously and the outcome is all the better for it.

Highlights of the album include Deep Blue Sea, which features two lovely violin solos, the upbeat The Nonsense In My Soul, Cassie O’Tone with its more obvious Scottish folk roots and Falling In Love, which has both great lyrics and a nice double tracked vocal effect.

As I said, this is an unusual album. But it is a good one, and it gets better the more you listen to it. There are a lot of subtle touches that have been fitted in despite the overall simplicity and the lyrics definitely merit close study.

Yes, there is more to Randolph’s Leap than might be immediately obvious.