THE RELATIONSHIPS: SCENE

TSR004 PRESS RELEASE 6/05

England's Dreaming

New album Scene by the Relationships Released June 2005

on Trailer Star Records of Nottingham, England (TSR 004)

The Relationships have become an institution in their home town of Oxford. Their tweedy bespoke psychedelia has charmed many down the years, and there may well have been no Ride or Radiohead but for their St George-like battling for the pop high ground. So after all these years have they retired to their libraries with pipe in hand ... no sir ... these gentlemen of the Telecaster and Vox have gunned their motors and done the pop equivalent of Dr Bannister's four-minute mile, leaving the pedestrian opposition in their wake.

Ex-Razorcut Mr Stevenson is a gloriously angled and inventive craftsman on his guitar, showing a rapier-like precision which blends beautifully with the thoroughly English atmospherics of crooner Mr Ramage's suburban blues songs. One listen to the wonderful 'English Blues' will show those unbelievers that these gentlemen know how to craft a top tune. The suave Mr Smith gives it a bit of Hooky and Burnel on the bass, and the incredible Mr Turan creates a powerful Keith Moonscape on the drums.

Without decrying their individuality, those looking for reference points would do well to look back to the golden summer of psychedelic tomfoolery, and names such as Mr Sydney Barrett and Mr Nicholas Drake come to mind, while those lords of the twang the Byrds and Australian pop perfectionists the Go-Betweens may enter the fray. Looking for a musical equivalent of Martin Parr's sublimely English photographic visions ... all high-coloured ice cream cones and deckchairs ... then here sir you have it.

I give you ladies and gentlemen the new Lords of the old Church ... yes these Dukes of Rhythm and Shoes and bicycle clips …The Relationships … a mighty fine bunch of men … the last of Olde England’s charmers … gawd bless em all.

The band has been together ten years. Scene is their second album – the first was Trend, which came out on Twee Kitten of California (www.tweekitten.com).

Twee Kitten also released their first EP, ‘Country Catalogue’.

Trend featured guest appearances by Amelia Fletcher (Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, Marine Research) and Andy Bell (Ride, Oasis).

Lineup - Richard Ramage, vocals and guitar ex the Anyways

Andy Smith, bass ex the Bigger the God

Angus Stevenson, guitar ex Razorcuts

Tim Turan, drums ex too many to mention

The track 'The Approach’ was previously available as a download single from www.shiftydisco.co.uk.

website

www.therelationships.co.uk

read the interview in Oxford's Nightshift magazine for June 2005 as pdf here...

http://nightshift.oxfordmusic.net/2005/jun/jun.pdf

or click on cover below for scanned version

The Relationships “Scene”(Trailer Star 2005)

Roland Barthes talks about three layers of signification: the denotative, connotative and myth, I bring this up because listening to this record you find yourself thinking not about the gentle eccentric pop psychedelia of the music (think Green Pyjamas or Robyn Hitchcock or the Byrds on the fried opening ‘Flying Saucer Girl&rsquo, nor the steadfast adherence to the genre, but how British the record sounds - how you think of damp tweed, Terry Thomas, E-Type Jaguars and white polo neck jumpers, how it makes you think of these things. It’s a neat trick to recreate something that probably never existed as we imagined it (see also ‘Medieval Day’: starts like the Go-Betweens, uses words like ‘tapestry heraldic pageantry’ – how good does that sound?); armed with 12-string guitars, aching melodies and rich harmonies it provides the perfect soundtrack to the Prisoner.

DC (6 out of ten) http://www.americana-uk.com/

This is a very English blues / Falling like rain on barbecues.” If any couplet sums up The Relationships, it’s this. Twelve-string guitars might shimmer and chime with the idle elegance of The Byrds, but ‘Scene’ feels as English as Elgar and semi-detached houses. The Relationships exist in the comfort zone of sadness: staring through net curtains, large brandy in hand, reflecting on the rain and missed opportunities. This, their second album, like its predecessor, is full of mysterious girls, galleries and strange suburbia. But The Relationships have never sounded this complete before, at once ephemeral and timeless. Richard Ramage’s delicately arranged songs and reflective, slightly surreal lyrics take centre stage but it’s Angus Stevenson’s spangled guitar licks that complete the sometimes magical effect. ‘ Flying Saucer Girl’ is almost a perfect pop song: solid and simple, full of fanciful thoughts and understated hooks. Similarly ‘ Princess’, a dinky nursery rhyme that oozes loneliness but forever carries you along with a sunshine guitar twang. But it’s ‘English Blues’ that takes The Relationship’s sweet, simple formula to its conclusion, with its mentions of butlers, potting sheds and eiderdowns and shrouded in a warm fug of melancholy that doesn’t want to impose. Oxford produces so many great new bands; there always seems to be another shooting star ready to speed through our field of vision, but The Relationships, ten years young, and with members whose musical history goes back to the early-80s, might just have eclipsed the lot of them with one of the most gently wonderful albums you’ll hear this year.

Dale Kattack NIGHTSHIFT MAGAZINE OXFORD July 2005

The Relationships serve up a bumper basket of perfect, pastoral pop.


“This is a very English blues / Falling like rain on barbecues”. The Relationships are the soft grey melancholy of English summer daze and picnics under hazy skies where you feast on servings of shivering slices of psychedelia pie. Photos on the record sleeve show a gentler version of this country that does actually still exist, if you’ll only tear yourself away from ‘Heat’ magazine a minute; model villages, windmills, churches, English eccentrics. The lyrics are full of the likes of favourite bookshops, village fetes, flowered hats, hailing cabs, a psychedelic ball and macrobiotic diets. So step aside awhile, lie back on the grass and luxuriate in the crystalline peal of ex-Razorcut (yay!) Angus Stevenson’s jangling twelve-string, whilst vocalist Richard Ramage’s estuary enunciation adds to the woozy Barrettness of it all.

‘Scene’ opens with a triumvirate of heart-meltingly perfect jangling pop songs reminiscent of fab mid-80s Suffolk superstars (well they were in my village) The Avons. ‘Flying Saucer Girl’ shimmers perfectly and wouldn’t sound out of place sparkling cutely in a Brian Jonestown Massacre set. ‘Mediaeval Day’ swerves and spangles with ringing chords, whilst ‘Hide and Seek’ chronicles a twisted English suburbia. A sense of harking back infuses the record. Mentions of “travelling back in time” and being “happy how you used to be”, are maybe a sign of the, uh, slightly more mature songwriter, which is no bad thing. This reaches a peak on the sublimely wistful ‘The Approach’ with its ‘60s dream sequence imagery and lament of “if we were still alive / this would be our finest night”. ‘Look at those Days’ busts into a magnificent 12-string freak-out finale, reminding me of ex-Primal Screamer Jim Beattie’s guitarry goodness (jingle-jangle Roger McGuinn era). Then there’s ‘Something Strange’ with its echoes of that great English psych oddball Julian Cope.

‘The Village in the Dream’ is a place where “everything is very, very green” and “smiling ladies served ice-cream”. Hang on isn’t that Truck Festival? It all makes sense, I saw The Relationships at Truck last year and The Relationships served up a bumper basket of perfect, pastoral pop.

author: Kirsten, Kitten Painting (CD-Baby)

The Relationships Myspace website

MOON OVER THE DOWNS: A Trailer Star Tribute

in aid of Cancer Research UK (Super Tiny Records 2005) 

"I could go on and on about the quality of this record so please do yourself a favour and go out and buy the damn thing! To sum up,a quote from ‘The Lynton Flood’ sung by Kevin Meisel ‘ Nobody knew where the water came from on that fateful day.’ Then again any quote from any song would sum up this superb compilation. Trailer Star= Five Star."

David Tonberg Medicine Music Reviews UK

One of the most beautiful Americana records that have been released over this past year is without any doubt this captivating album. The 15 tracks are 15 beautiful songs, which, in spite of their diversity, constitute one coherent whole. They paint a picture of the darkish, Twin Peaks-like world of Trailer Star.

BERT VAN KESSEL Insurgent Country Germany

The album certainly holds its head high with any other number of other, more orthodox, tribute albums and rarely betrays its DIY origins and the haste with which it was assembled. The quality of the songs and performances are certainly worth hearing for their own sake, but spending money on the album also gives the bonus of helping with cancer research.

STEVEN WILCOCK Triste Magazine UK

" ... Shaun Belcher, a freelance journalist. Belcher also provides all the lyrics for the record. His writing seems steeped in the nostalgic melancholy of Woody Guthrie or even Thomas Hardy and works very well in a peculiarly English way."

AMERICANA-UK.COM

"He's an impressive and authentically steeped writer and deservedly gets an equally impressive if largely little known roster of contributors to interpret his material."

MIKE DAVIES NETRHYTHMS UK

AVAILABLE FROM SUPER TINY RECORDS

THE FLOODPLAIN DEMOS PRESS RELEASE 11/01

The floodplain demos were recorded over two years in Cowley, Oxford, England on a dodgy sharp minidisc. They were then edited in cooledit 96 before being burnt to cd. Trailer star is a professor of Americana and poor deluded soul who still dreams of visiting a mythical USA. In fact he thinks he was brought up in a small American town and if you saw his hometown you'd probably think he was right. It all started going wrong when he read a review of Big Star #1/Radio City double album which was re-released in 1977. Buying this album whilst attending foundation art school had a serious long term affect that gave birth years later to The Alex Chilton homage punk band The High Priests When not thinking he's living in Arkansas trailer star scrapes a living and watches tv and strums guitar. He used to write poetry and paint pictures but times are hard so there hasn't been room for such niceties. Life isn't easy for an aspiring obscure cult artist these days. Hell even the market for outsider art is drying up with all the competition. trailer star is philosophical if he doesn't sell any of these cds he can always give 'em away and there's always a hole to be dug or a wall to be painted somewhere for somebody. trailer star - he came from nowhere and with a bit of luck he'll be able to live there in a trailer for a while longer.

TRAILER STAR "Floodplain Demos"

"Trailer Star , a singer songwriter and poet from Oxford and like the title says, these are rough demos of an album due in 2002. Just an acoustic guitar and voice (folky and Cohen-like at times) but there's enough quality to warrant investigating the fully realised version of these songs."

AMERICANA UK Jan. 2002