Sometimes the best albums are the ones which capture not just the spirit of the time, but also its very sound.
The beauty of Crosby Stills and Nash’s debut, CS&N, for example, isn’t just in the way it documents the mid-60s peace and love ideals circulating around the time of it’s conception, but also its ability to use acoustic guitars, minimal production and three-part harmonies to record the sound of America’s West coast at that moment in time. If you listen closely to the album, and close your eyes, you can almost hear the sun shining through the window of the trio’s condo way up in Laurel Canyon as California becomes rich with pop music. There is no other point in time you could be.
You could repeat this theory for other great albums, say Bowie’s mid 70s masterpiece ‘Low’ or The Clash’s 1977 ‘The Clash’, which allow you to not only hear a man in his early 30s struggling with depression, or a group of adolescents angry at the turbulent culture of late 70’s Britain, but also transport you to cold, grey, Berlin or an aggressive, speed-fuelled, London.
Drowned in a folk sensibility, the debut album by North Shields Hector Gannet, Big Harcar, is rooted in the sound of the North East of England and also the manual labour industries which operated out of the River Tyne. Sparse, melancholic in places, and filled with swooping chorus’s, Big Harcar captures not only themes of the North East’s fishing communities, but also it’s sounds and spirit. There is no other place you could be.
Perhaps a distant relative of Sting’s 2014 folk/Northern-roots album ‘The last ship’, though updated with a more contemporary rock/indie sound, Big Harcar finds a bridge between the North’s folk traditions and industrial past; setting itself in the sounds and spirit of the River Tyne and moving the listener through the North’s history. Deeply historical, and layered in modernised folk structures, Big Harcar is a masterful album in both composition and theme.
Rooted in North Eastern values, particularly the desire to play things down, the band themselves are keen to minimise the talk of the grand gestures surrounding the album; “I’m not sure the album is a concept album” confirms chief Harcar songwriter Aaron Duff “like a lot of artists I write about the people and places I see around me and am inspired by the local area and people and places. Gradually they come together into songs, but I didn’t set out to write a concept album specifically about North Shields’.
Pushed further though Duff does admit that there is a theme to the album, “yes, I guess there is. I started most of the work as a solo thing and it was partly inspired by my family background which is rooted in elements of fisherman and trawler men in North Shields so I suppose that’s the main theme”.
A relatively slow process to create, Big Harcar took time to gestate; Duff writing the main elements to the pieces before taking them to the wider band to support their development “some of the tracks on the album are quiet old, I had the main elements of ideas and then started to work with a band of brilliant musicians who added their own textures and built out the album. The album is a body of work that spans about two years”
However long it took to create, record, and then produce (“Paul Gregory of Lanterns on the Lake did a great job of capturing the sound we wanted, and you can’t underplay his role”), it seems like Big Harcar was worth the wait; the album already picking up prominent plaudits, not just from the North East but also from outside the region (Louder Than War touted Hector Gannet as one of the ’Top 25 bands that might change your life in 2020’) and it seems like the sound of North Shields travels well.
After the cancellation of a support slot on (what should have been) the next Sam Fender tour, recently announced gigs at the Tyne Bank for Hector sold out almost immediately, something which kept the band optimistic about the future. Duff, in particular is proud of the North’s scene and the way certain promoters and venues have tried to keep live music alive; “It’s upsetting in a way to put the album out in the middle of Covid, meaning we might be restricted in how we tour it, but it’s great to see venues like the Tyne Bank come up with ingenious ways of trying to make live music work, and also the Virgin Arena who’ve done incredible work for the region to keep live music going”.
As they should, Hector remain optimistic about the future, though cautiously so, “the response so far to the album has been great but you don’t know where we are going to be with Covid so we just need to carry on being as optimistic as we can, and fingers crossed it’ll all be okay”.
Listening to Big Harcar you get the impression that the sound of North Shields will always be okay.
Big Harcar is released 30th October 2020 via Guga Records
Rewrite – 22.9.20
Sometimes the best albums are the ones which capture not just the spirit of the time, but also its very sound.
The beauty of Crosby Stills and Nash’s debut, CS&N, for example, isn’t just in the way it documents the mid-60s peace and love ideals, but also its ability to use acoustic guitars, minimal production and three-part harmonies to record the sound of America’s West coast at that moment in time; there is no other place in time you could be.
Drowned in a folk sensibility, the debut album by North Shields Hector Gannet, Big Harcar, finds itself rooted in the sound of the North East of England. Sparse, melancholic in places, and filled with swooping chorus’s, Big Harcar captures not only themes of the North East, and it’s fishing communities, but also its sounds and spirit. There is no other place you could be.
Perhaps a distant relative of Sting’s 2014 folk/Northern-roots album ‘The last ship’, though updated with a more contemporary rock/indie sound, Big Harcar finds a bridge between the North’s folk traditions and its industrial past; setting itself in the sounds and spirit of the River Tyne and moving the listener through the North’s history. Deeply historical, poetic, and layered in modernised folk structures, Big Harcar is a masterful album in both composition and theme; ‘All hail, all glory’ investigating the very nature of patriotism, and ‘Dead nag’ highlighting the struggle of the working class to keep their heads above water.
Rooted in North Eastern values, particularly the desire to play things down, the band themselves are keen to minimise the talk of the grand gestures surrounding the album; “I’m not sure the album is a concept album” confirms chief Harcar songwriter Aaron Duff “like a lot of artists I write about the people and places I see around me from day to day and am inspired by the local area and people and places. Gradually these ideas come together into songs, and the songs go on to make albums, but I didn’t set out to write a concept album specifically about North Shields and the Tyne’.
Though perhaps not the concept which it appears to be, Duff does admit that there is a consistent theme to the album, “yes, I guess there is. I started most of the work as a solo thing and it was partly inspired by my family background which is rooted in elements of fisherman and trawler men in North Shields so I suppose that’s the main theme. We also talk about a local lighthouse keeper Grace Darling and the natural beauty of Northumberland, so the album is certainly grounded with local reference points and historical events”.
A relatively slow process in creating, the principle gestation for Big Harcar was the time it took Duff to collect the right pieces together; some songs forming part of Duff’s solo material as opposed to this project. Only once Duff felt the right pieces had been created was he happy to take them to the wider Hector Gannet; “some of the tracks on the album are quiet old, I took the main elements of the songs and started to work them through with a band of brilliant musicians who added their own textures and built out the album. The album is a body of work that spans about two years”.
However long it took to create, record, and then produce (“Paul Gregory of Lanterns on the Lake did a great job of capturing the sound we wanted, and you can’t underplay his role”), it seems like Big Harcar was worth the wait; the album already picking up prominent plaudits, not just from the North East but also from outside the region (Louder Than War touted Hector Gannet as one of the ’Top 25 bands that might change your life in 2020’). It seems like the sound of North Shields is not only pretty, but also travels well; somewhat of a shame when considering that the band were due to tour the album as part of a support slot on (what should have been) the next Sam Fender tour.
Recently announced gigs at the Tyne Bank however mean that local shows are possible, though with both selling out almost immediately, it’s unclear of what will come next to support the album’s launch. Duff, in particular seems grateful to the North’s scene and local promoters not just for giving them a vehicle to promote their album, but also in keeping live music alive; “It’s upsetting in a way to put the album out in the middle of Covid, meaning we might be restricted in how we tour it, but it’s great to see venues like the Tyne Bank come up with ingenious ways of trying to make live music work. I’d say the same about the Virgin Arena who’ve done incredible work to keep live music going. We all need to help each other at times like this”.
As they should, Hector remain optimistic about the future, though cautiously so, “the response so far to the album has been great but you don’t know where we are going to be with Covid so we just need to carry on being as optimistic as we can, and fingers crossed it’ll all be okay”.
Listening to Big Harcar you get the impression that the sound of North Shields will always be okay. There is no other place you could be.