The new release by Little Sparta takes Mekons collaboration in directions old and new.
After 26 years at work and 20 years since their first release, veteran Alan D. Boyd’s project Little Sparta just put out another LP: The Telling of the Truth, an album made up of a mixture of cinematic instrumentals that showcase both their background in soundtrack work and new ventures into folk-tinged pop.
The album is shaped by a return to a collaboration with Sally Timms and Susie Honeyman of The Mekons, featuring Timms’ voice on tracks such as the eponymous The Telling of The Truth and Honeyman’s violin throughout. It is, in a sense, a return to earlier form, but also an album recorded at a crossroads, with Boyd vacating his long-held studio in Kentish Town and reflecting on his place in an uncertain world. Suitably, the artwork, a painting by Jock McFadyen, portrays a desolate, run-down street. The ruins, perhaps, of the project’s past: the wreck portrayed just before the next step forward. Or so we hope.
The songs feature lush string arrangements by Honeyman that are nevertheless tinged with folk fiddle stylings, and which have previously earned them comparisons to the Dirty Three, an instrumental project helmed by Warren Ellis of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds fame. Boyd’s occasional electric guitar adds either a cutting edge or a delicate, soft ambience.
The album opens with title track The Telling of The Truth, followed by You Cut Me, a single first released in 2022. Both tracks build thematically on musical repetition. The Telling of The Truth is a strong, infectious opener, featuring Sally Timms’ earnest vocals just about rising up from a wall of electric guitar, percussion, and violin.
The instrumentals showcase the band’s experience in soundtracks: evocative but raw, sometimes ominous, and occasionally conveying an unexpected hope. While at times they can appear to lack a constant through-line, perhaps even a visual one, in tracks like Fate’s Great Moral, both the music and the lyrics grow into an arresting conclusion, a mantra of sorts, delivered bittersweetly: “fate’s great moral/love breeds sorrow“.
There is a captivating looseness, rawness, stemming from the fact that the album was put together from a day-long improvisation session at a studio on its last legs. Tightness and polish are often thought of as the ultimate standard, but in the days of automation, will we continue to think that? And would that allow this release to speak as it does?
The band’s strong suit comes alive with the musical landscape crafted for the last track, (Revenge Is) A Tide That Waits, which in no uncertain terms reflects:
“There are forces/that do not fear a blade,/that do not answer to a name,/and with long memory wait/for the balance to tip.”
A hope that hinges on a long timeframe. But ultimately, in uncertain times, Little Sparta ask a question for the ages:
“Can this be a low/What will you deduce“?
And then answer it:
“Everything’s contingent/On the telling of the truth“.
