Tom Williams and the Boat - Doing My Best EP

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 5 / 4 / 2009

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Review

I really hadn’t noticed how many bands and singers were about doing half-spoken wordy acoustic folk-pop with violins, pianos and drums. It must have been on one of those many occasions when I wasn’t watching. Of course, I noticed Laura Marling, and spent much of last year playing her album to death. More recently, I was really impressed by Emmy The Great. But then they were everywhere, (sidebar, I especially recommend a band I saw recently called the Laish Quartet, who are quite excellent) and here is another. Might I quickly declare an interest ? The singer is a fellow Kentish Man, (although we’ve never met and aren‘t especially likely to), and we don’t have many bands that get onto the national airwaves. I wouldn’t want to have my fine county’s reputation tarnished by any awful music, but as Mr Williams is clearly half-decent, I for one will be cheering him on all along the way. Apparently, according to our good friend, the press release, Tom Williams and the Boat sound like ‘Bob Dylan meets Lightspeed Champion’. I can’t hear any Dylan here at all, give or take the odd harmonica, but the second comparison isn’t entirely off beat. Hidden under the folk exterior, there is a pop sensibility itching to get out, as is the case with Lightspeed Champion. If you don’t like the so-called ‘anti-folk’ bands you’ve heard on the radio recently, then you won’t like this. But if you can stomach the lyrical references to a certain social networking website, this may be up your street. These songs sound as if they trying to be lazy, aimless folk jams, but can’t quite suppress the urge to let rip, rock out and give us a tune. As this six track release goes on, there are several signs that the band’s anti-folk’ will soon be left behind. Best of the lot is ‘Voicemail’, which works itself up into an epic final section where the Boat branch their sound out to almost Arcade Fire proportions. It’s good stuff.

Track Listing:-

1 24
2 Concentrate
3 Mary
4 Voicemail
5 Doing My Best
6 My Will