Inge Thomson – Shipwrecks and Static (Navigator)
Review by Stephen Taylor
It has long been established that the nearer to a pole you live the madder you are. It’s the magnetotron rays that do it. Eskimos build houses out of snow and throat sing at each other until they summon the aurora borealis. Scandinavians split neatly into groups that venerate either Black Metal and then burn churches, or Eurovision and wear fluorescent pop socks. Penguins look shifty. Inge Thomson makes grin-inducing, cynic-melting, accordion-soaked tunes peppered with electronic bleeps and African thumb piano boings.
Hailing from Fair Isle from off of the shipping forecast she’s about as polar as you can get without falling off the edge. And. She’s. NUTS. Shipwrecks and Static is about as good as a description of itself as it could be. The whole album has that island kookiness and tiny town eccentric edge that could be anywhere between Lost, Northern Exposure and the Clangers. Inge plays with the Karine Polwart Trio when she’s behaving herself, presumably playing mad scientist in a sonic shed somewhere the rest of the time, preparing to launch her solo efforts onto a more molecular-audiology ready landscape.
Most of the songs are fairly traddish, folky numbers augmented with a synth backing that is sometime a subtle replacement for percussion, sometimes a full-on Boards of Canada romp through vistas electronic. John is wrinkle-your-nose cute. Almost a round sung with herself it’s speckled with banjo twangs and anklet jangles. Tin Man is an instrumental tearjerker that, along with an unironic helping of sunshine, countryside and the prospect of pretty company, jerked more tears than was strictly decorous on British rail. Scoundrel Clouds is a bit of a rant about the weather.
Childlike whilst avoiding naivety, when the experimental stuff doesn’t add anything it doesn’t detract. And when it hits the mark it’s perfect and new to the point of pinching its cheeks and going wubba wubba wubba.
They say it was a brave man who once tried an oyster. I bet it wasn’t. It was a loon from the Shetlands who wanted to try everything to see if it was nice. Good luck to her.
