(photo Philippe Lebruman)

Review: 

This is the Kit:

Off Off On

8/10

This is the Kit’s new record should be listened to in transit.

Which is easier said than done in this year of travel bans, tears and tiers.

Off Off On’s luscious soundscapes are made for the landscapes.

By all means listen to this record in your room. But it’s at its best when you roam.

Exercise each day – and make Off Off On your personal trainer.

Because it’s a liberating long player for lockdown lives.

Kate Stables’ fifth studio album came out exactly two months ago, yet I’m only just putting a review to print.

For me albums are like a fine wine. They are uncorked and need to breathe for a little while.

I need to travel with tunes. For them to soundtrack the rails and roads.

Opener Found Out features several cascading acoustic guitars and a tortured soul harbouring secrets and pain.

Is the chorus the verse or is the verse the chorus? I don’t know. It’s a wonderful start.

Constant inner turmoil seems to be a theme throughout this album.

Even the title Off Off On could be a metaphor for this year of stop start stops.

Started Again has a saxophone centrepiece amid a tremendous wall of rocks and water.

The slow atmospheric build up could almost be The Cure in the early 90s with the sliding sax very Bowie Blackstar.

And it dawns that this is a song I’ve wanted to hear on record for a while.

This is the Kit played this when I last saw them live (at Kendal Library) in June 2019.

I remembered how breathtaking it was and the line “universe and universally” stuck in my mind for months.

This is What You Did sets a quicker pace swirling around like multicolours in a child’s kaleidoscope.

Kate’s banjo takes centre stage with manic picking packing a punch in this three minute thirteen stand-out.

Lyrically there’s another head in trouble “Do you feel it the same as you used to? Is it digging you down? Does it pile up to bury you?”

The first fast-paced track on the LP, This Is What You Did will be a barnstormer live – whenever This is the Kit get on the road and audiences can return to venues.

Coming to Get You Nowhere vies for best song on this record along with ten other contenders.

And I’m not sure how long This is the Kit can have heir music classed as ‘folk’.

This record has folk roots for sure, but it’s expansive, electric, layered, and edgy.

For all the tormented souls in the lyrics, the final track Keep Going offers positivity and powerful recovery.

And of course there’s travel:

“Movement is deciding, Forward is the doing, Keep going.” 

Dickie Felton