Labels: Monotone Tapes
Review by: Andy Malcolm
I was reading the Still Single blog a while back, and they reviewed this record, and I thought “that sounds good, wish we got sent that for review”. Then I discovered that it actually had been, and it was sitting in my pile. Absurd! So, I have had this LP for a long time, and never quite gotten around to writing about it. Which is a shame, because ‘Songs for Scaffolding’ is a super solid album and I think that several of you would enjoy it. The bulk of the LP is rather run down and sombre independent rock, with a little bit of country thrown in. At it’s most downbeat, it also brings to mind the music of outfits such as Songs: Ohia, Horse Marriage and Kepler. Other times, and I’d hesitate to call them upbeat, it is a little more bombastic and sort of reminds me of the very little Bright Eyes stuff that I have heard in the dim and distant past. There’s also one wildly out of place shoegaze/emo rocker that squalls away and has these neat distant screamed vocals like on that one Christie Front Drive song, good stuff but very much an anomaly on here. The included press sheet declares that this is Chauchat’s 8th record. Eighth! I wonder how the others were. The finest moments on this record are when it quietens right down and the guitars twinkle mournfully, a sad, slow meandering… my kind of music for sure. The songs were apparently recorded in an abandoned factory (which previously manufactured sweets) and that suits the wide open sound they conjure up, although it’s more the expansive space of big skies and horizon-bound corn fields than that of failed industrial morbidity. And sweets.
Good LP. Sorry to the label that I took so fucking long to come up with something to say about it.