Tompaulin - Give Me A Riot In The Summer Time

  by Anthony Strutt

published: 8 / 8 / 2002

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Review

This is Tompaulin's sixth release to date and the first sign of new material from the Blackburn-based band whose debut album and last release 'The Town and the City' came out in November. Tompaulin are my best friend's favourite band of the last few years, but my relationship with them is different to his strong friendship with them. The first time that I interviewed Tompaulin for my former fanzine, 'Independent Underground Sound' , the group's frontman Jamie Holman told me that he was a big fan of the Jesus and Mary Chain's William Reid. My previous interview prior to Tompaulin had been with William Reid. I interviewed Jamie again last November, which was about the same time that I interviewed Freeheat, the new project of Jiim Reid and Ben Lurie, both of whom had also been in the Jesus and Mary Chain. Jim and Ben mentioned in the interview that they had produced 'A Long Way to Nowhere', the debut mini album of the Parkinsons. Over the course of various internet chats with Jamie about Freeheat, I told him about this and he asked me if I thought Freeheat would produce Tompaulin. My answer was "Go for it ! If you don't ask, lad, you don't get !" He asked. They met, went drinking and this single is the first result of that collaboration, upon which I sort of helped out on bringing two of my favourite bands together (In my own little way). 'Riot' is very different from Tompulin's vinyl adventures of the past, and was described to me a while ago by Jamie as "Nancy and Lee" on smack, which is sort of right. Both the first and second track were produced by Jim and Ben and Jamie told me he got to use Jim's back line while recording this. 'Give Me a Riot' and 'Swing Low Stuart' are both dark and light songs. 'Give Me a Riot' starts out softly with just Jamie on vocals and at this stage of the song has a Buffalo Springfield 'For What It is Worth' feel before his co-vocalist Stacey Mckenna comes in taking over the vocals and the tune bucks up its tempo. To a degree they sound like the Velvets. This could be the second part of 'Slender' , one of Tompaulin's early singles. The main chunk of 'Swing Low Stuart' has Stacey singing about a normal Northern guy and his sexual perversion to a nice groove, but half way through Jamie runs off to find Jim's guitar and effects pedals, putting a stupid grin on my face, as he gets everything to feedback, better even than any record by the Jesus and Mary Chain. This is followed by the softest and lightest track here, the beautiful old ballad that is 'The Saddest of Things' which I seem to have been listening to for years now. Alison Cotton of Saloon plays some fine violin on this. Definitely Tompaulin's finest twelve minutes to date !

Track Listing:-

1 Give Me A Riot In The Summertime
2 Swing Low Stuart
3 The Sadness Of Things