A special concert launching Grasscut‘s new single, Catholic Architecture, a cover of and tribute to Robert Wyatt, released in October on Lo Recordings.
A huge influence on the band, Andrew has been a Wyatt fan since the 1980s, while Marcus has just written his biography, Different Every Time, due to be published by Serpent’s Tail in October 2014. The single also acts as a bridge between Unearth, Grasscut’s second album, and Everyone Was A Bird, scheduled for release in 2015 on Lo Recordings.
Catholic Architecture is the second time Grasscut and Wyatt’s paths have crossed, in 2012 they collaborated on the track Richardson Road with Wyatt contributing cornet, piano and vocals. A track he subsequently picked as one of his favourite guest appearances and that will feature on the Different Every Time compilation being released by Domino Records this autumn to accompany the biography.
For this new version of Catholic Architecture Grasscut have taken their cue from the sound of Robert’s 1982 Rough Trade compilation, Nothing Can Stop Us. The song itself, meanwhile, comes from Robert’s 1991 album Dondestan. The highly evocative lyrics, by Robert’s wife Alfreda Benge, describe empty homes in an off-season holiday resort near Barcelona, and Grasscut’s interpretation, with its sparse elegiac piano and muted brass, expertly captures that scene.
The second song on the single, Beacon, was inspired by a 12-mile walk from the English Channel to the top of Firle Beacon on the South Downs, on the occasion of the Summer Solstice. It’s about leaving the place you live and, when looking down on it from a height, finding it unfamiliar. Throughout the track’s four and a half minutes its sound transforms from electronic to live strings and drums, prefiguring the sound of the band’s forthcoming third album, Everyone Was A Bird.
Laish is the songwriting project of Daniel Green, a Yorkshire-born musician who has made London his home.
His twenties were spent as an integral member of the Willkommen Collective, a group of songwriters and musicians based in Brighton who embodied the recent revival of acoustic music. Under the Laish moniker, and with an ever-evolving group of musicians, Green produced two critically acclaimed albums and toured extensively across the UK and Europe, and appearing at this year’s End of the Road Festival.
He has supported and shared stages with renowned artists including Grizzly Bear, Beach House, Jason Lytle, Peggy Sue, David Thomas Broughton, Richard Dawson and The Leisure Society.
“Daniel Green entertainingly plays frontman and proves an exceptional storyteller. Rousing and reflective, pensive and philosophical, Laish hypnotize the listener with a dazzling array of sound and lyrics.” Folkgeek
He’ll be playing solo so you can hear the words.
