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The Magic Lantern

Patriots (e.p.)

 

Look this quintet up on the Web (The Magic Lantern) and you'll find 'Alternative/Acoustic Folk' flashing up, and it's as good a broad description as any of their approach.

Formed around the singer/songwriter skills of acoustic guitarist Jamie Doe, the band can draw on an extraordinary range of sounds and textures to emphasise the meanings, bring out all the subtleties of his lyrics, for in addition to the relatively conventional finger-picked guitar played by Doe, the Magic Lantern also contains a cellist (Lucy Railton), a bass clarinettist (Dave Shulman), a percussionist doubling on organ and cavaćo (Fred Thomas) and an electric guitarist (Ben Moorehouse).

Doe's songs, sung in a refreshingly full-throated, but light and flexible tenor voice, are deceptively jaunty, their catchy melodies employing wide intervallic leaps and set to infectious rhythms, but listen to them closely and you'll find that any passing resemblance to, say, the Incredible String Band is strictly superficial: just as Robin Williamson, Mike Heron & Co. were products of their time in their basically life-affirming spaced-out reveries drawing on a ragbag of Eastern philosophies, the Magic Lantern are very much products of the twenty-first century, their songs dealing with post-apocalyptic refuges in space ('A Man and His Dog'), the corrupting effects of capitalism ('Gotta Get Paid') and the apparent impossibility of belief and belonging ('Patriots' and 'Heading Home', the latter, indeed, containing a chilling reference to a 'tattoo beneath the sleeve').

Warmly recommended, especially to anyone who thinks meaningful eccentricity and sheer originality are rare commodities in contemporary music.