Following a pandemic-era Zoom call in which several traditional British folk musicians attempted to play together but fell out of sync, Lost Crowns main man Richard Larcombe was supposedly inspired to pick up instruments he’d never played before – fiddle, harp, tin whistle, concertina and English border bagpipe. The resulting recording stakes a serious claim to being the most exciting, most advanced music of its kind. The caveat being that there are few other artists who have even attempted to sound like this – and some listeners might well consider the entire enterprise a kind of monstrous folly to begin with.
The eight songs contained within this album are not entirely without precedent. One might consider Lost Crowns to be akin to a wilder Gentle Giant, had they been inspired by Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Conlon Nancarrow, instead of medieval and baroque chamber music. The work of the Henry Cow and Art Bears-inspired American Rock In Opposition groups Thinking Plague and 5uus are also obvious touchpoints, although Lost Crowns use of the darker kind of English folk exemplified by Comus, as well as a propensity for undeniably earworm-worthy riffs and vocal melodies, mark them apart from those bands. Undoubtedly, they will have crossover appeal for Cardiacs fans too, though it’s harder to draw any direct comparison there, with Tim Smith having always had an ear for a certain kind of psychedelic pop. This music will not be for everyone. Accusations of being wilfully difficult or overly composed are often fielded at such music (and are not entirely without foundation).
A friend who I played this to (whose work I am also very fond of) told me that he felt that the main problem with overly composed music is often “unmotivated dissonance” and opined that he’d rather have “a pretty melody grounded in a necessary harmony.” Certainly, there are such bands who would incline me to agree with this assessment, far more so than when considering Lost Crowns. There’s a fine line between originality and simply being wilfully awkward, but equally a ‘pretty melody’ will not be exactly the same for all sets of ears. There is too, the kind of ugly beauty exemplified by Troutmask Replica, which perhaps sidesteps the issue of being too academic in its construction by virtue of its radically ‘primitive’ compositional technique – an untrained composer creating on an unfamiliar instrument. Lost Crowns tread this fine line with aplomb, and the symphonically rendered chaos of their tightly scripted tunes transcends being simply intellectually interesting with a visceral dynamism usually absent from such complex music.
Three of the best tracks on The Heart is in the Body, ‘She Didn’t Want,’ ‘Et Tu Brute’ and ‘Did Look A Fool’, are almost insanely compelling and offer unique delights I’ve honestly yet to find elsewhere. That two of those tracks were among the earliest recorded for the album perhaps hints at a future problem of the band’s own making. After taking this sound as far as they have done on this release, one wonders where there is left for them to go next. Wherever that may be, put me down for a ticket.
