Valley Forge & The Weary Band

Valley Forge & The Weary Band CD review (featured in Decode magazine)

Venue Magazine

(on The Weary Band's Ashton Court set)

"Lyrically superb (recurring theme: horrid office life illuminated by moments of beauty), musically nourishing (melodica and cello in there) and lots of new stuff. They seem to get better by the week."

(on Valley Forge & The Weary Band in general)

"One gloomy January evening a cobweb-blitzing demo caused Venue to cancel all prior engagements and stay at home, head-cocked stereowrads like the HMV dog...all night. Seven months later and a veritable A&R smog has descended upon Bristol alterno-rockers Valley Forge, their folksy alter-eogs The Weary Band, and their insidiously rhythmic, harmony-rich and multi-instrumental patchworks that touch upon travel, office life, tragedy and girls, and recall the scuffed wonderment of Neil Young, Wilco, Pavement, Big Star, and Elliott Smith. Rarely have we seen such shuffly, boho charm in such a gracious and tightly knitted package."

Ashton Court Punter

(on The Weary Band's Ashton Court set - printed in Venue magazine)

"It's [the festival] nice because it's Bristol's little secret - nobody comes to the city just for Ashton Court. Also there's always hope that something really exciting is going to happen, that you're going to see a really good band or have a blast; and I've just seen The Weary Band in the Acoustic Marquee, so it's already come to pass."

Charley Dunlap

(on The Weary Band's set at Bath Porter Cellar - from The Porter website)

The Weary Band laid down 12 weary tunes that, in their gentle monotonousness, create the kind of mesmeric feeling you have in the moments when you are waking up or going to sleep. Those are the moments when we tend to be most accessible to music so, in that way, The Weary Band is very effective at permeating even consciousness in a noisy student pub like the Porter. It’s a strategy, if you could call it that, that has worked well for bands like the Red House Painters, the Cowboy Junkies, and Jesse Sykes.

The Weary band has a lighter feel than the above-named, as if those had been crossed with Paul Simon or Nick Drake. In addition, the band – lead guitarist Alex, bassist Tom and drummer Phil, who surround singer-guitarist Tim – plays with a precision and attention to arrangement detail that recalls Nick Drake. It is probably Tim’s dry, midrange voice that elicits most of the Paul Simon comparisons, but there is is a similarity in lyric writing as well.

The songs are finely located in place and feeling, not quite vignettes in a Ray Davies, Springsteen, or later Lou Reed style, but a long way from the florid imagery and surreal detachment of Dylan. Melodically, they fall into a more contemporary repeated-phrase style than the extended melodies of Tin Pan Alley. This adds to the hypnotic quality.

Within the confines of their style, there is a lot of subtle variety from song to song, not enough to wake you, but enough to nudge you into a different dream. There were very minimal songs with little more than Tim’s fingerpicked folk guitar under his voice, then there were relatively heavy, rythmically interesting songs like Tropical Diseases. The key word here is relatively; even heavy is subdued.

The Weary Band is a very professional band – in a good way, I hasten to add. They play more than competently and they stay within the bounds of their skills by creating thoughtfull arrangements and sticking to them. It’s a band that would translate well to recording and indeed, someone was recording them at the gig. My only misgiving is that with their dry style, they lack warmth; I hope he was using lots of old valve equipment.