interviews & press
Interviews
The Herald: April 2013
The List: April 2013
Oysters Earrings: April 2013
The Liminal: October 2012
The Herald: January 2012
Gold Flake Paint zine: Dec 2011
Tidal Wave of Indifference blog: Dec 2011
Clash magazine: Track by Track for ‘Weald’: Nov 2011
Plenty Side zine: Feb 2011
Radio
17.11.12 BBC Radio Lancashire, (with David Chatton Barker) On the Wire interview with Steve Barker (playlist)
14.10.12 Simple Folk Radio session
04.04.12 BBC Radio 6 Music interview with Andrew Collins
23.03.12 BBC Radio 6 Music interview and guest mix for Tom Ravenscroft
I played:
1. Can - Sing Swan Song - Ege Bamyasi (United Artists)
2. Bonnie Dobson - Winter’s Going - Bonnie Dobson (RCA)
3. Chemutoi Ketienya & girls - Chemirocha - The Very Best of Hugh Tracey (Sharp Wood)
4. Broadcast - I Found the F - Tender Buttons (Warp)
5. Ian Humberstone & Malcolm Benzie - Under God’s Roof - Songs for Mariann Voaden (Finder’s Keepers)
6. Chubby Checker - Goodbye Victoria - Chequered/New Revelation - (Ariola)
Press
Some incoming reviews for “Weald” LP (available to buy from Song, by Toad Records)
“should be championed as something truly great” - The Liminal
“Isn’t it grand when a debut album from a little known artist arrives in November and vies with the already-anointed likes of Metronomy, The Horrors and Ghostpoet for your 2011 top spot? That beautiful thing is Weald by Rob St John, a Lancastrian singer-songwriter with the range, boom and profundity of Ian Curtis, Nick Drake and Stuart Staples whose songs animate geography like Luke Haines’ do history” - Andrew Collins, WORD Magazine
“surprising and utterly magnificent 9/10” - This is Fake DIY
“gorgeous songwriting” - The Glasgow Herald
“Weald proves a consistently strong and challenging record. Each of its eight tracks blend emotional girth with an exquisite musical craft that stretches far beyond the reaches of many of today’s young singer-songwriters 8/10” - Drowned in Sound
”Weald is a strangely compelling and absolutely engrossing listen from a promising new talent” - The Line of Best Fit
“Like David Thomas Broughton fronting Mount Eerie or Alexander Tucker conducting a psycho-geographical field study. Picking out individual instruments doesn’t convey the combined effect of layered textures that swell and contract, making the album sound cavernous despite a lingering intimacy.” - Folly of Youth
”Rob St John’s most accomplished document to date, ‘Weald’ is tender yet sparse, modern yet timeless” - CLASH Magazine
”A rightly murky, seaweedy “Sargasso Sea”. St John sings it searchingly, not quite certain, until the choruses’ clear strong crests, waves pushed over cliffs.” - Said The Gramophone, Best Songs of 2011
“There’s a fractured, lost and ancient air to Rob St. John’s debut full-length release on the Song By Toad label. Ostensibly a folk record, aware of all that tag implies, the songs are simply arranged – delicate guitar work weaves around shuffling dreams beats as St. John’s anguished vocals creak over the top, while his voice sounds like its been around for years and lived a life that’s not, entirely, been kind. Stand out track is ‘Sargasso Sea’ which flows and moves like the currents that drive the real thing. The guitar riff, stripped back, raw and deep, reminds me of something Talk Talk would have used, an instrument in perfect harmony with the crooked vocals and jazz-tinged drums, John’s delivery so matter of fact that the words slam in your face” - The Liminal, Albums of 2012
“for all the low-key chorales, musical saws and string-laden back-woods baroque pulsing this full-length debut’s eight songs, it’s St John’s increasingly forceful mix of melancholy and otherworldly rapture that counts. At the record’s core is the slash and burn revelation of Domino. If the late Nick Drake and another old Nick’s Bad Seeds ever hitch up at some rural English crossroads, this is what such an unlikely clash of souls might sound like.” - The List
“unlistenable” - The 405
“Rob St. John makes melancholy, pastoral folk-blues, his voice as deep and meaningful as Ian Curtis’s, or Stuart Staples’. It’s haunting and elegaic and sad, and I can’t stop playing it” - Andrew Collins, BBC 6 Music
”Weald is a powerfully bleak album, yet its seeming austerity and uniform dourness is belied by a surprisingly wide range of textures and moods” - Dusted Magazine
”Weald is one of those LPs that seeps into your subconsious until every song seems like an age-old standard that you’ve only just redisovered. St John’s distinctive singing style paints a dark, wistful portrait of the artist as a young man, and the brooding canopy of languid guitar, hushed harmonium and subtle field recordings supplements this with the feel of a timeless classic. “ - The Scotsman Radar, Band of 2011
“Weald is a genuinely astonishing debut statement from UK singer-songwriter Rob St. John. It’s dark in places and funereally paced, but ragingly honest and intense. If there was any justice this would be 2011’s For Emma, Forever Ago. It’s that good.” - Epitonic
“Twenty five years ago St. John would have been in a dour gruff Northern indie-band, a good one mind; they’d have done Peel sessions and at some point been on the cover of Melody Maker. It’s 2011 though so things are different. There’s no real need for band mates anymore, records can be made by one man. And folk music isn’t just Fair Isle jumpers and real ale; there’s a place for mavericks, for drones, for the screech and scrape of strings, for funereal rhythms and screaming guitar, these are the kinds of things that make songs like ‘Domino’ so compelling; and me so happy.” - Americana UK
“allow yourself to spend some time with it and you will discover one of the most bold, brave and heart-wrenching records of the year. Truly mesmerising.” - Gold Flake Paint
“Stuart Staples singing over the soundtrack to Bagpuss played on Ennio Morricone’s guitar (and that’s a very good thing), Weald comes at you through the fog and chills and envelops in equal measure. Fans of King Creosote may well find common ground.”- STV
“There’s a multitude of reasons to fall for this record. Coupled with Rob’s delicate, understated vocal delivery, the ghostly otherworld of Weald has been captured in spades.” - The Skinny
”an album full of devastatingly beautiful (or should that be beautifully devastating) songs” ****1/2 - Is This Music?
“Weald” is beautifully gloomy and wonderfully atmospheric record which is quite unlike anything else you’re going to hear this year” - SHOFT
”both melancholic and magical” - FADED GLAMOUR
”What sets his music apart though is the vocals. With a voice sitting somewhere between David Gedge and Nick Cave, St. John’s northern English baritone is powerful enough to carry a song on its own” - Tidal Wave of Indifference
Live reports:
”Last year’s Weald was measured, fragile and, outside a few circles, criminally overlooked. The deliberation is apparent on stage too, even if the songs take on a whole new vibrancy with the backing of a full band. Every note, distortion and lunge of his baritone Lancastrian voice, seems to be in its right place. A searing guitar solo on the tail-end of the excellent ‘Sargasso Sea’ silences even the most persistent chatterers at the back.” - The Line of Best Fit, Islington Assembly Hall, London, 06.11.12
“Rob St. John’s malty, Lancastrian voice is buttressed by harmonies by Ian Humberstone and Tom Western, in a succession of languorous folk-inflected songs. They sing ‘Oh, my wife and baby grieve me/How it breaks my heart to leave ye’ in call and response in the broken-token sea shanty ‘Shallow Brown’, as creeping keyboards form a drizzly horizon line somwhere over the Lune Estuary” - The Wire, Music Language Festival, Glasgow, No. 345, Nov 2012
”Rob St John’s beatific doom-pop rendered the room more lovesick than ever for the songs on his brilliant album, Weald, including Sargasso Sea and the Acid Test” - The Herald, Fence Records Awaygame Review 25.07.12
”Rob St. John has a gloomy demeanour, but his voice has a distinctive tone, like the length of a cello stroke, and his backing musicians meticulously draw out every fine line of his atmospheric songs. Particularly impressive is the drummer, whose slow-motion gurning, slapping, cymbal scratching and artful bell-tapping is a joy to behold.”- The Skinny, Fence Records Awaygame Review 25.07.12
”Intricate musical landscapes, brimming with melancholy, experimentation and emphatically built crescendos follow, including Weald album tracks ‘Acid Test’ and the mystical ‘Sargasso Sea’. Perhaps a new generation of folk troubadour, St John is primarily a mesmerising performer; exuding the timelessness of a bygone era. A compelling musical synergy also keeps the crowd fixated, minutes of possessed primal drumming/tambourine beating proving truly standout. Closing on an intimate note, St John steps into a crowd of ‘friendly faces’, his musicians downing instruments to howl a hearty chorus. As he interweaves the line ‘Farewell Banshee Labyrinth’ it’s fair to say he might have charmed us.” - The List, Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh Review 08.03.12
“And so it was that the day’s standout, if too-brief, performance was a collaborative set from Ian Humberstone and Rob St John. Their alt-folk, doom-pop, post-rock – call it what you will – came backed by an Edinburgh grassroots super-group starring Eagleowl’s axe-wizard Bart Owl, string-diviner Malcolm Benzie and super-drummer Owen Williams. His beats throughout were versatile and arresting, and he crowned the collective’s prog-rock finale with the aforesaid foray into Oriental death-by-clarinet. Masked or unmasked, Williams is a DIY pop superstar.” - The Herald, Song, by Toad Xmas Party, St Stephen’s Church Review 12.11.11
“St John provided a stand-out set on the Saturday – his brooding folk, languid alt-rock and romantic silhouette variously conjuring Smog, the Velvet Underground and Nick Drake – as he previewed songs from his lovely forthcoming album, Weald (the inclusion of enduring favourite ‘The Acid Test’ is always welcome: its unhurried celebration of the humdrum is glorious)” - The List, Retreat! Festival, Edinburgh Festival Review, 01.09.11
