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SONGDOG
Biography
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Songdog
- Japanese bio
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“But when you wake
up from a dream there’s no getting back there”
--- the poignancy of passing time, the magic dissolving,
is the recurring theme of the latest album from Celtic
folk noiristes SONGDOG. Lives fade away like a half-heard
murmur behind the curtain in the cinema on a Saturday
afternoon, love disappears in a taxi on a rainy night,
they’re “growing old in a snakepit”,
yet the old punk spirit, realigned for modern times,
remains intact in the uncompromising, explicit lyricism
of ‘A Life Eroding’ (One Little Indian Records,
2010).
Coming from Blackwood
in South Wales (Lyndon Morgans & Karl Woodward)
and Dundee in Scotland (Dave Paterson), Songdog combine
acoustic and electronic instruments to create soundscapes
for singer/songwriter (and award-winning playwright)
Lyndon Morgans's vignettes on life, love and loss. Songdog's
albums (including 2008’s 'A Wretched Sinner's
Song' and 2005’s 'The Time Of Summer Lightning')
have received great reviews and plays on radio shows
including Jonathan Ross and Janice Long on BBC Radio
2, Gideon Coe on BBC 6 Music, John Kennedy on London's
XFM, the Arctic Circle and Hello Goodbye on Resonance
FM plus other regional and international play. Their
cover of Dylan's 'Desolation Row' was commissioned specially
for Uncut’s 100th birthday issue covermount.
Influences: Lyndon reveres
Leonard Cohen, James Joyce, Joni Mitchell, Samuel Beckett,
Tom Waits, Marcel Proust, Bob Dylan and Emile Cioran.
Plus Roy Orbison and Franz Kafka, the Beatles, Bruce
Springsteen and Baudelaire. He doesn’t really
like to hang out, but if these people were to book a
bus and ask him along for a summer-afternoon’s
chilling out in the hills he’d definitely go,
because they’re the people he grew up reading
and listening to, his role-models if you like. (Some
of them he’s seen live, some of them he’s
just visited the graves of. And he taught himself French
so he could read some of them in their own language).
For Lyndon, if it’s
not about poetry (the shorthand of the heart) and great
tunes it’s probably just a career move. Sure,
poetry can encompass anything from “The Waste
Land” to “Long Tall Sally” but just
so long as it’s there! In earlier bands Lyndon
used to yelp his stuff in front of Marshall-stacks and
big bass-bins, but with Songdog he changed tack and
sold his gold-top Les Paul for a Martin. So there’s
as much attitude in his songs as ever, only now it’s
murmured sotto voce.
Fans include Bruce Springsteen,
who used their track 'Days of Armageddon' for "walk
in music" on his last European tour and personally
requested a copy of 'A Wretched Sinner's Song'. Recent
dates include the Port Eliot Festival, Folk In A Box
at the One On One Festival, Peter Parker's Rock n Roll
Club, the Borderline, Roundhouse Studio, Bush Hall,
Union Chapel, ICA and Spitz, shows with Joan As Police
Woman, Louis Eliot, Johnny Dowd, Duke Special, and the
Go-Betweens on their last UK tour. They have also appeared
at international festivals in Ireland, Canada, Spain,
Sweden, Holland and Russia.
Lyndon's non-musical
writing includes 'Water Music' (for which he won the
Verity Bargate Award for Best New Play), 'Jitterbugger:
a cartoon for the stage', a French monologue, 'Conte
de Fées' and a screenplay 'Crazy House'. He was
recently invited to submit a piece on Samuel Beckett
for a forthcoming book about musicians and their literary
heroes, 'Filthy Lyre', and his lyrics for 'Cold Coffee
& Ava Gardner' were included in a new book about
Ava Gardner by Connecticut State University Professor
Gil Gigliotti.
“Lyndon Morgans's Welsh
wanderers explore the soul's secrets and heart's longings
on this richly-layered album. Musically, lyrically and
emotionally, Songdog, rather than the more celebrated
Manic Street Preachers, are the true bards of Blackwood."
Gavin Martin, The Mirror
"Lyndon Morgans's lyrics are as evocative as ever...magical
songs...You'll be with him all the way" James McNair,
Mojo
“..Their music is dark and sinister and beautiful
and Lyndon’s songs are by turns sexy, scary, funny,
creepy, heartbreaking and usually always brilliant.”
Allan Jones (Editor), Uncut
“..like Nick Cave, he sings as if the world’s
end is nigh, and does so convincingly” Q
"..glacier-paced folk noir..the storytelling hints
at a real gravity.' NME
“One of those life-changing albums where you’ll
remember forever where you were when you first heard
it” RocknReel
“Intense & sensual collection of baroque,
last chance lives...supremely evocative imagery that
lesser poets can only aspire to” Maverick
"A totally unique sound" Jack Douglas (Producer
- John Lennon, The Who, Miles Davis, George Harrison,
Patti Smith, New York Dolls)
"Beautiful.." Jonathan Ross
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