Here’s the video for Sirens from Transatlantic duo Sons of Town Hall. There’s an ethereal tunefulness and sweet, haunting poetry to the words as we lose ourselves in Sirens: “Come near sweet travelers // Drink from the stream // We’ll give, we’ll gather // All you could need // We know the road is long and hard, and there’s always more dust and thorns // Let us lay our hands upon your worried brows // No more trouble now, no more trouble now.” The sense of longing carried in the melody and harmonies pull us towards distant shores.
Singer-songwriters Ben Parker (Ben & Jason) and David Berkeley created Sons of Town Hall over drinks in a London pub almost a decade ago. The project was an ambitious blend of musical performance, theatre and narrative, full of wit, good humour and imagination. Sirens is taken from the pair’s long-awaited second album, Of Ghosts and Gods, which has just been released. The album features Tom Waits-like tales and lyricism, as well as the duo’s captivating vocal harmonies.
For the album, Parker and Berkeley transport us into an elaborate fictional world they have created, which is inhabited by two characters, Josiah Chester Jones (Berkeley) and George Ulysses Brown (Parker), who travel the world together on a self-built mythical raft. The project is inventive, immersive and results in bewitching on-stage performances. Dressed in Victorian-era outfits, the pair present a wonderful, humoured storytelling adventure. Parker says: “The costumes, in the end, somehow enable us to be more ourselves.” Berkeley adds, “We are characters in a fiction we’ve dreamed up and re-create with our audiences every night. Given the woes of today’s world, it feels more important than ever to collectively imagine something better.” Indeed, and what an intriguing musical idea. The narrative has been expanded further by a podcast called Madmen Cross the Water, hosted by the fictional character Elias B. Worthington, a fan and band archivist played by British actor Oliver Maltman. Backed by a lush original score, each episode tells the stories behind the fictional adventures narrated through the songs. The podcast and further info can be found here. Absorbing stuff.
