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Website [Release date 06.03.26]
Sons of Town Hall formed nearly a decade ago in a London pub and consist of singer-songwriters Ben Parker and David Berkeley.
Sons of Town Hall have crafted an elaborate fictional world to frame the album, centred around two main characters Josiah Chester Jones (Berkeley) and George Ulysses Brown (Parker), who travel the world together on a self-built mythical raft. Berkeley adds, “We are characters in a fiction we’ve dreamed up and re-create with our audiences every night. Given the woes of today’s world, it feels more important than ever to collectively imagine something better.”
Expanding the album’s universe, the duo launched the Madmen Cross the Water podcast. Hosted by fictional superfan and self-appointed band archivist, Elias B. Worthington (played by British actor Oliver Maltman), each episode in the first season tells the adventures behind the songs on the new album.
Sons of Town Hall have invested a lot of time and effort into creating this album, and musically they have gone that extra mile with guest musicians including Will Robertson (strings), Jordan Katz (horns) and Mathias Kunzli (drums, percussion).
Musically it is like Simon & Garfunkel go steampunk. Their vocal harmonies are exquisite as the album’s opener ‘Gods’ illustrates. On ‘Whalebone’ they build the song to a frantic frenzy of strings and vocals. The sort of song Mumford and Sons did in their earlier years.
‘Sirens’ is indeed inviting the listener in, although luckily not to a rocky end as the sirens of the sea do… Little surprise as this song was released as a single. Another possible single in waiting would be ‘How to Build A Boat’. The vocals, guitar, strings and horns all work their individual magic to provide one of the album’s undoubted highlights.
‘New Orleans’ has a New Orleans jazz/swing feel as you’d expect and really gets the tapping away.
‘In My Arms Once More’ is a slow, heartfelt ballad where the duo’s vocals are aided by a lovely piece of fiddle playing.
This is the never-ending beauty of music and reviewing it, there is always something that comes along and blows the proverbial musical doors off! From the duo’s glorious vocal harmonies trough to the music and lyrics that the listener can happily lose themselves in for an enjoyable hour or more. Pretty darn essential. ****1/2
Review by Jason Ritchie
3 Mar – Club Passim – Cambridge, MA
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