Nigel Kneale audio drama: "The Stone Tape" and "The Road"

These are two BBC radio adaptations from 2015 of much older teleplays by Nigel Kneale. They are not available to stream or download on the BBC's own website, but they can be found on shady websites like the Internet Archive or YouTube.

The Stone Tape

This one was adapted from Kneale's 1972 original by Peter Strickland (who also directs) and Matthew Graham. The basic set up is essentially the same as in Nigel Kneale's original: some scientists move into a Victorian mansion to do research and discover that it seems to be haunted; they stumble onto the "stone tape" theory of hauntings (that traumatic events of the past can somehow be recorded in their surroundings). And computer programmer Jill Greely (Jane Asher in the original, played this time by Romola Garai) seems to have a special sensitivity towards the ghostly manifestations.

If you've seen the TV drama then the way this one ends will probably not surprise you. What is maybe interesting is the way in which it deviates from the TV version. For one thing, it is set in 1979 rather than the early 1970s. Also the scientists are working on using sound waves in mining or something, rather than trying to make a breakthrough in recording technology. But the really striking difference for me is the lack of the original's all pervasive racism. I'm guessing that comes from the march of progress and a sense that having a play full of characters who make jokes about "the Japs" or their Irish employer would be a bit problematic in our more enlightened times. Yet it feels like a retreat, not because I am a colossal racist but because the original characters' racism struck me as a marker of weakness and unease on their parts, whether over having to take orders from an Irishman or the imminent destruction of their industry by Japanese competition.

Still, this remains an impressive work, thanks to strong direction and acting bringing out the best of the source material. The play also features striking electronic music by James Cargill of Broadcast and Children of Alice.

The Road

The TV version of this was broadcast in 1963, but no recordings of it survive. For this radio version, Toby Hadoke adapted Nigel Kneale's original script and Charlotte Riches directed. Actors included Mark Gatiss and Hattie Morahan. Set in 1768 this centres on an investigation of mysterious phenomena in a wood by the local squire (one of those gentleman scientist types, played by Adrian Scarborough) and a visiting urban philosopher (Gatiss); the philosopher seems to be carrying on with the squire's wife (Morahan), or maybe I am supposing too much here.

The phenomena being investigated see strange sounds manifesting in a local wood, but only on one night of the year. People report hearing unfathomable and disconcerting noises, but also the sound of screams and people in extreme terror. And a local girl reports that she also heard the sound of people moving over a paved roadway, even though the wood has been there since time immemorial. There are stories of Queen Boudicca's followers being massacred in the woods during Roman times; the squire thinks the sounds might be a stone tape echo of this but the philosopher dismisses such ideas as superstitious nonsense. He sees the supposed haunting as the product of over-active imaginations. It turns out both squire and philosopher are wrong: the actual nature of the haunting may surprise you. The ending packs a considerable punch; rather than spoil it I encourage readers to listen to the audio drama themselves.

Like everyone my age I have not seen the original television version of The Road, but I did find myself wondering how Toby Hadoke's version might have varied from the source material. My suspicion is that Nigel Kneale's philosopher probably did not have a West Indian former slave as a manservant, although it's not impossible that someone of his class at that time might have done. It pleased me that the drama presented 18th century race relations in a reasonably realistic manner and did not present us with a fantasy bollocks utopia version of such things (as seen in popular drama Bridgerton).

images:

The Stone Tape (BBC)

The Road (BBC)

More BBC Audio Drama: "Broken Colours", "Who Is Aldrich Kemp?", "Siege"

These BBC audio dramas all came out earlier in 2022.

Broken Colours This one was written by Matthew Broughton, who wrote the brilliant Tracks, which ran for five series. This one begins with Jess (Holli Dempsey) suffering an injury when a demonstration turns into a riot. A passer by named Daniel (Josef Altin) brings her in for medical treatment. A romance blooms between them, despite their very different backgrounds, but Jess starts thinking there might be something a bit sketchy about Daniel. And then he disappears from her life and stops returning her calls. Obviously people are ghosted all the time, but there's a bit more to it here. The depiction of the shady world Daniel inhabits is fascinating, but so is Jess's own descent into problematic moral compromises. It's also good on how Daniel and Jess are attracted to each other, despite being from completely different worlds. All in all this is a strong piece of drama that I recommend engaging with.

You can listen to it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014p7z

Who Is Aldrich Kemp?

New drama from Julian Simpson, who wrote those Lovecraft Investigation dramas. And an exciting whammy at the end of an early episode reveals that this actually overlaps with those. But unfortunately it is more like another episode of those not great Mythos-Glamis-Albion spy dramas than proper Lovecraftian spookiness. It's not really to my taste but I suspect I will still download the sequel when it comes out.

Don't believe the rumours: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014gtt

Siege Now this is good. Written by Katherine Jakeways, Eno Mfon and Darragh Mortell, it is presented as a series of interviews with people who found themselves being held as hostages when a small-time crook's attempt to rob a convenience store goes badly wrong. The former hostages all have axes to grind and records to set straight, with the way they were previously presented in the media being a particular bone of contention; they also have their problems with each other. Thanks to a great ensemble cast and impressive direction from John Norton the format works really well. Siege is a great example of what can be achieved with audio drama.

Listen to it or download it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00146bz

Audio Drama: "The Sink", "Body Horror", "Power Out", "Steelheads"

These are all BBC audio dramas that I listened to on lunchtime walks while working from home. Some are better than others.

Body Horror (2020)

This was written by Lucy Catherine, who also wrote Harland, which disappointed me. I liked this a bit more. It is set in the near future when the march of progress means it is now possible to perform full body transplants. The main character is a middle aged woman who is less than comfortable in her unfit overweight body. She wins the lotto and has her head grafted onto the body of a young woman who died in a tragic accident. She also has some kind of remould to de-age her face. So all is good. Except she starts feeling ghostly impressions of her new body's former owner. And she begins to hear suggestions that the body transplant clinic might have its own dark secrets.

I thought maybe this unfolded in a somewhat predictable manner, but for all that it was well made and packed a few punches as it rolled along. Try it for yourself and see what you think: Body Horror

Power Out (2020)

And this one is about a kid hacker who gets involved in a radical group who decide to bring down the UK national grid as a protest against environmental destruction or something. The characterisation is pretty good but I thought the kid hacker was portrayed too positively; the programme did not really engage with how many people would die or see themselves fall into destitution if the UK power grid was brought down. But you can listen to it yourself here.

Steelheads (2021)

This one starts off with an up and coming star tennis player who has an inoperable brain tumour. She agrees to be placed in suspended animation in the hope that the passage of time will mean that future science be able to cure her. But when she awakes, the world has gone to complete shit despite it being only a couple of years into the future.

It is by the same people who created The Cipher but is much better than that, with the plotting carrying things along in an enjoyably relentless manner while Jessica Barden is impressive as the lead. But when they finally reveal what has happened to the world I didn't really buy it. I found myself thinking that a problem with mystery dramas is that too often the writers make them up as they go along, coming unstuck when they have to pull an explanatory rabbit out of the hat.

Listen to it yourself here.

The Sink: A Sleep Aid (2020)

I have saved the best till last, and it is an odd one. Written by Natasha Hodgson and with creepy narration by Alice Lowe, it presents itself as being a kind of programme to help people sleep, combined with some kind of semi-scientific study of people's dreams. So it starts off with Alice Lowe talking about how worried she is about how the listener hasn't been sleeping too well lately and how we should sit back and let her help us, but then it switches into what seems to be re-enactments of people's dreams. At first these are bizarre but comic, with the kind of surreal logic found in real dreams. A writer finds himself being berated by an interviewer after he has written a book so big that it won't fit in his house. A couple go for a picnic in the woods in an attempt to save their troubled relationship but then encounter a man who has got stuck while taking part in a fun run in a "Sonic the Hog" costume; their efforts to help him trigger the destruction of their relationship. And so on. But the mood begins to shift, with things becoming noticeably more ominous when one guy asks another, "Did a bird man ever come to your school?" After that it becomes impossible to miss all the references to birds peppering the various dreams.

What it's all actually about remains a bit arcane but the journey is a fascinating one. And I find myself thinking that I should give it a re-listen while lying in bed falling asleep, letting it seep into my dreams. Maybe you should do that too, but be careful of the Bird Man.

Did anyone else ever have the bird man come to their primary school? WITH THE PHOTOS OF OWLS AND HUMMINGBIRDS? AND WE BOUGHT THEM. SO MANY.

— Natasha Hodgson (@NatashaHodgson) July 3, 2012

One great thing I discovered subsequently is that back in 2012 Natasha Hodgson tweeted about how the Bird Man did actually come to her primary school. So clearly this drama was a long time hatching, making her an obsessive hero for our sleep deprived times.

Listen to it yourself here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08vxrgx. Sweet dreams.

Hello Glastonbury

Now we are in late summer, which means that the Glastonbury festival took place nearly two months ago. As always, many people watched TV coverage of Glastonbury while muttering sagely that they'd much rather enjoy the performances from their living room than actually attend the festival. Good for them. It does fit with our hypermediated age that for many people their preferred mode of engagement with the festival is one that sees them looking at it on a screen. I nevertheless remain committed to the controversial belief that if you are doing Glastonbury by watching it on television then you are doing it wrong. Actually I would go further than that. You don't "do" anything by watching it on television. To actually do Glastonbury you need to be sleep deprived, caked in at least three days worth of dried-in sweat and have no clothing items that don't reek of woodsmoke or second hand joints (admittedly I know several people who regularly manage this from the comfort of their home).

That said, it's a while since I actually attended Glastonbury. But as I don't have a television I have not been watching live performances onscreen either. However, on a visit to my parents shortly after the festival concluded I caught a broadcast on the BBC of Glastonbury highlights: one tune from a succession of artists across a range of stages. I'm assuming they cherry-picked the best bits or biggest hit from each performer (though why anyone thought we needed to see Primal Scream lurching through "Jailbird" is anyone's guess: it was like a horrifying flashback to that period in the 1990s when every music magazine came with a tape of the song), but in some respects the format is a bit unsatisfying, as there is no sense of a set building. That'll teach me not to either go to the festival or have a television to watch the live coverage.

One thing I found odd about the BBC's Glastonbury coverage was how it was filmed and edited. We got a lot of fast cuts and camera shots that seemed to be taken from the stage itself or just in front of it, with performers often being shown in close-up. For me an effect of this was that the footage looked less like something taken at a festival or live performance and more like something shot in a studio, as though Glastonbury was just an extended episode of Later With Jools Holland. The crowd did feature in the occasional reaction shots, but shots showing the stage from the audience's perspective were rare. Once I noticed this it started grating on me and I found myself comparing it all unfavourably with Stop Making Sense, with its many long shots from the audience's perspective giving viewers far more of a sense of what it would be like to actually attend the concert.

The acts themselves… well they were variable. Megan Thee [sic] Stallion (not actually a stallion) had a certain "put it away love, you'll have someone's eye out" quality to her performance; some may have found this a distraction from the music, which may have been the intention. My mother felt that Wet Leg looked like escapees from the 1970s while I found myself thinking that maybe I should stop watching videos of them performing "Chaise Longue" and just wait till I see them myself in November. Paul McCartney doing "Band on the Run" with Dave Grohl was a bit underwhelming, but I wondered if that might be a product of seeing it on its own as opposed to the full set (McCartney was great when I saw him at Glastonbury in 2004, at a point when he was only starting to be cool again). I continue to not really get St. Vincent, for all that on paper her brainy lady pop music sounds like something designed for me personally. Billie Eilish's song meanwhile was pretty entertaining in a chunky kind of way, reminding me that I should probably engage more with her music as part of my plan to get down with the kids. I also liked Olivia Rodrigo's tune enough to consider taking a punt on her album.

The thing I saw that most had me wishing I was there was Lordé doing "Solar Power". If you timed your enhancements well then the tune's transition point would be the most epic of moments. The art direction of the staging was also stunning, with Lordé's hair dyed blonde to match the yellow costumes of her attractively laid out musicians and a stage set that for "Solar Power" looked like something from Philip Glass's Akhnaten. Ms Lordé also has this great wriggly dance (which I understand to be controversial, as some consider it to be a sign of how she is keeping it real, while others see her un-choreographed dancing as amateurish and an indicator that she is not serious about her art).

Beyond that I found Diana Ross doing "Upside Down" interesting on a number of levels. The security people at the front doing a formation dance that they had obviously learned five minutes previously was kind of endearing. Ross herself was far less aloof than I was expecting, as I had the idea she was one of those diva-like figures who find audiences a squalid inconvenience. Instead she seemed very relaxed and incline to crack jokes and engage with the crowd, not really coming across as the glacial "Miss Ross" I was expecting. More power to her.

I'm sure there were lots of other good acts at the festival whose music was not included in the highlights programme. Overall though I was struck by many mainstream pop acts there were playing. That was increasingly the case when I was still going to the festival and it's not an intrinsically bad thing, as not all mainstream pop music is bad. But it does feel a bit like the festival is losing or has long ago lost any countercultural edge it might once have had. Much of this I suspect is a product of the festival's televising. TV brings in a pile of money but it does mean you're going to have to programme acts that will appeal to the people at home. I wonder if that mean that the eccentrics who padded out the bill at the smaller stages no longer get a look in. No Joolz, Attila the Stockbroker, or John Otway: no credibility.

I'm also struck by how much bigger the festival site is now, which surely means that there are a lot more people attending than there were in my day. That again must impact on the festival's atmosphere, making it more mainstream and less countercultural. Oh well.

Concert: A Ritual Sea (Workman's Club)

A Ritual Sea are Dublin's very own Hiberno-French gothgaze sensations and this February concert saw them launching their debut album. When I arrived a support act was already onstage, a woman who played a mysterious stringed instrument (later revealed to be a balalaika) while she sang and fiddled with electronics. I think at least one song was about her cat. There was a definitely appealing quality to her sound but it was a real struggle to find out who she was, with people I asked not knowing or not remembering the name she was trading under, or else they did know and said it to me but the ambient noise meant I was unable to pick it up. Eventually research revealed that she records and plays as Cormorant Tree Oh and is on Bandcamp ( https://cormorant-tree-oh.bandcamp.com ). I recommend checking her out.

A Ritual Sea themselves I have seen a few times supporting other people and once playing as headliners in a small venue with problematic sound. This was my first time seeing them in all their glory and they have really flowered into an impressive live band. On record they tend towards the ethereal end of shoegaze but live they are a good bit more muscular, with a lot of this down to the powerful rhythm section. However the shimmering guitar action keeps the shoegaze faith, with the delightful interlocking tones of guitarists Florian Chombart and Nina Ruminska counterpointing the vocals of Chombart and Donna McCabe. Ruminska's playing in particular is stunning; she seems to be one of those people who are ridiculously mutli-talented, as investigation reveals her to be a gifted creator of visual art.

So this was a great concert and the crowd responded in kind. However, there was a note of sadness to proceedings. The band had already said that this would be their only concert this year, but now from the stage McCabe intimated that it could be their last concert ever, without going into the reasons for this possible ending. This struck me as most unfortunate. After releasing their likeable album last year and then delivering such a strong live performance it's hard not to see A Ritual Sea as a band really hitting their creative stride, so it would be a shame if they were to disappear just as they are showing such promise.

More concert photos

Concert: LoneLady (Grand Social)

Join me in a journey back to February for what was my first proper gig post-lockdown: you know, a gig where you stand up and buy drinks from a bar and people dance a bit and stuff. But unfortunately I found that I had largely forgotten how to do gigs properly, crucially failing to recall that you really don't want to be bringing too much clothes along with you. It's better to be a bit chilly while walking to the venue than stuck with a mountain of stuff at it, particularly as it turned out that either the Grand Social was not operating a cloakroom or else had decided to carefully hide it away where none might find it.

LoneLady you will recall is the edgy electronic retro dance music sensation from Manchester whom I discovered via Tim Burgess and his listening parties (notably the one for her brilliant 2021 album Former Things). But before her there was a local support act: a chap called Chósta, who turns out to be from the picturesque locality of Donabate, which is the next place along on the train from where I grew up but somewhere I have never really explored properly, making it a zone of mystery and danger (accentuated by it being adjacent to an enormous but now largely derelict Victorian asylum). Mr Chósta was one of those laptop guys, so I was expecting him to be a bit boring, but actually his set was very enjoyable in a low key glitchy electronic kind of way. Consider checking out his material on Bandcamp: https://chosta.bandcamp.com

Although her records are all her own work, LoneLady (real name Julie Campbell) was playing with two other people: James Field, who bashed away at electronic drum pads while standing up, and Kendra Jane Frost, who played electronic keyboards and other instruments. The performance was great but I think maybe the other attendees were a bit like me and so were trying to remember how to do gigs. Audience responses seemed a bit muted, only really ramping up by the concert's latter stages. By the time members of Dublin's LoneLady fan community had remembered how to enjoy themselves it was time for LoneLady and her friends to bid us farewell. Still, it was great hearing the edgy electronic tunes from Former Things live, together with the tracks from her earlier albums, at the time still new to me. I hope that Ms LoneLady returns to these shores now that we have all remembered how to do concerts.

LoneLady's music can be found in record stores and on Bandcamp: https://lonelady.bandcamp.com

More concert photographs: https://www.flickr.com/photos/inuitmonster/albums/72177720298580159

Two Hugh Lane Gallery concerts: William Butt and the Spero Quartet

These are concerts I went to back in January and February. They were on in the Hugh Lane Gallery and because Covid-19 was still a big deal then they involved both a degree of social distancing and mask wearing, which was a bit weird.

The first concert was by William Butt, who is a cellist. I had seen him previously at those greatly missed Santa Rita concerts that the Ergodos lads had put on. He is an impressive performer, with the physicality of his playing being particularly striking if you are able to see him close up. For this concert he was performing two pieces by Bach (Cello Suite no. 1 in G and Cello Suite no 4 in E flat). I don't really have much to say about this but that it was great, the perfect combination of musician and work. But sadly I was a little bit puppy tired and may have nodded off at one or two points.

And the concert can actually be watched on YouTube, should you want to see William Butt in action.

For the second concert I made sure to knock back an espresso beforehand to ensure there would be no embarrassing sleepy moments. This time the performers were the Spero Quartet. They are a string quartet made up of young people, three of whom are women. Like a rock band they were travelling around Ireland playing this show, with the Hugh Lane concert being the final date of the tour, which meant there were some hi-jinks. The programme was an adventurous one, with the initial Mozart Quartet in D major being the most conventional piece on offer, a genuinely beautiful piece that would have been worth the price of admission on its own.

Then there was Satellites, a three movement piece by composed by Garth Knox, who introduced the piece before the Spero people played it. The first part of this, "Geostationary" was based around the idea that a geostationary orbit is in constant motion while remaining fixed relative to a point on the Earth's surface, with the music attempting to reflect this. More easily recognisable was the second section, "Spectral Sunrise", which was inspired by how people on the International Space Staton experience some 16 sunrises a day, with the music evoking several of these from their first tinges to the full on appearance of the sun (and then because why not, an attempt to render in music some astronaut doing a space walk). The last section of Knox's piece, "Dimensions", was a musical exploration of multiple dimensions, but sadly only the three spatial dimensions. Part of this was done by having the players use their bows in non-standard ways, including as whips (on the air, not each other).

The last piece was Shostakovich's String Quartet no. 9 in E flat major, a late composition of his from 1964. Things were finally going well for the composer at that point. He was finally basking in some sustained official favour and no longer in danger of being sent to the Gulag for making music Stalin deemed tuneless. And also he was now happily married to his third wife, Irina Supinskaya. For all my love of Shostakovich, his string quartets are a bit of a blind spot for me, but it was interesting how there was a bit of an edge to this piece, with it not having the complacent feel one might expect from the work of a composer whose life was now one of relative contentment. The piece contrasts interestingly with the ones from Mozart and Knox: less avant-garde than the latter but edgier than the former, with its composer's characteristic refusal to just serve up beautiful music typifying his 20th century modernist approach.

This concert can also be re-watched on YouTube:

images:

William Butt, cellist

The Spero Quartet

Record review corner: Wet Leg, Tenniscoats, Ethan Daniel Davidson

I never review records, except when I do.

Wet Let [untitled Wet Leg album] (2022)

At last I review the album everyone has been talking about. But first a quick recap for readers who have not been paying attention. Wet Leg were founded by two women from the Isle of Wight (of all places), Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, who recruited a bunch of blokes to pad out the sound. On the back of two brilliant singles last year (the languid pervathon "Chaise Longue" and the truly epic "Wet Dream") they garnered a lot of attention, leading to a considerable build up of anticipation before the release of this, their debut album.

So, what's it like? If you've watched YouTube videos of Wet Leg playing live you'll have this sense of Teasdale and Chambers as rofflers, and this comes across on record too, mostly in Teasdale's vocal delivery. But the odd point of comparison in her singing style for me is with Cate Le Bon, with tracks like "Oh No" displaying a particular debt to the Welsh siren.

I have seen it suggested that the album is in one respect reminiscent of Elastica's debut, in that there is a good bit of filler once you get away from the big tunes. Aside from being offended by this calumny towards the wonderful Elastica album, I'm not sure it is entirely true of this one either. Definitely it is the big tunes that gather my attention here, to the extent that it is hard not to just keep playing "Wet Dream" over and over, but the other tunes have a heft to them too. I particularly like "Loving You" as a sad lovesong of the "I am so not over a terminated relationship" variety.

But for me this is the "Wet Dream" album. God that is such a tune. I think the song would be a hit on the back of the music alone, with its propulsive rhythm, call-response vocals, handclaps, and mega drumming driving things forward, but the vocals really hit it out of the park, both Teasdale's lyrics and her delivery. Again for the benefit of people who have been living under a stone, this sees her describing in lurid detail an erotic dream that the listener has been having about her, in tones suggesting an ever increasing level of shock and disgust at what the listener has been imagining her doing and having done to her. The positioning of her authorial perspective as somehow looking in on someone else's private imaginings is wonderfully meta.

Overall this is a fun record that I love listening to. It leaves me with a sense of what could be magically achieved if more no-hoper indie bands were to suddenly develop killer tunes and topnotch production.

Tenniscoats Tan Tan Therapy (2008)

Readers will recall that I liked Tenniscoats when I saw them at Le Guess Who last November. My beloved liked them too, so I decided to get something by them for her as a Christmas present. The problem with this plan is i) Tenniscoats have a lot of records and ii) no shop in Ireland stocks anything by them. Having to embrace the horror of online ordering meant also that I had to seek some straight dope on the best introductory Tenniscoats record from a friend who knows about these things. He also checked out with a bud who is some kind of Tenniscoats superfan. They both included this album in their key recommendations list. And so I came to order this CD all the way from Japan. And despite my leaving it very late to order, it still arrived in time for Christmas. Well done Japan.

In case you've never heard any Tenniscoats music, this is basically collection of quiet gentle tunes that make for a perfect antidote to the hustle and bustle of the world that surrounds us. It is not solely the product of Tenniscoats' own labours, being a collaboration with a band called Tape who are apparently from Sweden. However I know so little about Tape that I cannot really say where Tenniscoats end and Tape begin. I think the vocals are all Saya Ueno from Tenniscoats but I can't really tell with the music. I think Takashi Ueno from Tenniscoats only really plays guitar, so perhaps the drums and advanced keyboards are by Tape. Anyway, it's all good, give it a listen, you may like it. "Uta ga Nainoni" [Like no songs], the album's second last track is a bit of a stand-out, Saya's non-verbal vocals appearing over music that flows like a river.

I ordered this from 7 e. p., a record label in Japan ( https://7eptokyo.bandcamp.com/album/tan-tan-therapy-cd ), but I see now that a remastered version is due to be released on download, CD and vinyl later this year: https://tenniscoats.bandcamp.com/album/tan-tan-therapy-2022-remaster

Ethan Daniel Davidson Silvertooth (2012)

A bit of an odd impulse purchase this one, except it was free because Mr Davidson is so against capitalism that he makes it impossible to pay him any money for his wares. I downloaded this from Bandcamp because Bernard Clark was bigging it up on Lyric FM's Blue of the Night. Blue of the Night is an odd programme, appearing on the classical music station of our national broadcaster. Bernard Clarke is the presenter of Blue of the Night. He previously presented Nova, a contemporary classical music which was not to everyone's taste. It was denounced in the Irish Senate as "an hour or two of unmerciful, thumps, bangs, whistles, squelches, belches and God Almighty knows what" and ultimately the show was cancelled.

Blue of the Night is a more gentle kettle of fish. It runs from 9.00 pm to midnight Monday to Thursday and is meant to be a gentle wind down programme, except that Clarke can be a bit wayward, having a tendency to go off on one by serving up a Led Zeppelin triple play or else treating listeners to some reggae tunes. Anyway, one evening he was going on about how amazing this Ethan Daniel Davidson guy was and being really impressionable I went and downloaded this album from Bandcamp (where it is available for free, as previously mentioned). And you know, it's fine, broadly blues based, but not really my thing and frankly I can't see why anyone would get that excited by it either, though of course listening to it as I write this I am thinking "Mmmm, that 'I See Satan Fall Like Lightning' song has a good beat".

You can check the album out for yourself on Bandcamp: https://ethandanieldavidson.bandcamp.com/album/silvertooth

images:

Wet Leg album (Wikipedia)

Tan Tan Therapy (Bandcamp)

Silvertooth (Bandcamp)