I Like Trains: The Christmas Tree Ship EP

Something’s happened to I Like Trains….Did you spot it? No? Look again. It’s all in the writing. A move from iLiKETRAiNS to the former, for reasons unbeknownst to me.

There’s another potentially more worrying development on The Christmas Tree Ship EP – it’s missing David Martin’s deep baritone and affecting storytelling. I do hope this is a temporary hiatus. Perhaps I’m just being lazy in having to imagine the historical subject matter – the loss of a ship in 1912 that carried Christmas trees across Lake Michigan to the residents of Chicago – rather than having the events re-told.

So in some ways the purely instrumental approach seems at first to slightly fall short of other offerings. But then you listen again and again, and waves of sound, equal parts icy and hearthside warming, breach your defences as guitars soothe, rouse, lull and tingle, leaving you full of melancholy and mournful conjecture as to what Christmas would be like without a tree. Typographical and other changes are forgiven and you’re made aware of just exactly what makes this lot so very special.

The EP only really makes sense as a whole so go buy it (if you can find it – the official website is sold out), wrap it up, put it under your tree and think of those lost as you warm your chestnuts.

Here’s a brief taster. Consider it a BBO bauble.

South Shore

angrybonbon