Ralfe Band - Attic Thieves Format: Album Release Date: 13th Oct 2008 Label: Loose Music Rating: Welcome to the off kilter, off the beaten track, down a side road, near those scary looking trees, you know, the ones that look like a bunch of old men praying to a bush that bears an uncanny resemblance to Queen Victoria on the toilet doing a difficult jigsaw puzzle, world of Ollie Ralfe. It's a ramshackle musical vision that on the cryptically titled 'Attic Thieves' sounds not unlike the soundtrack to an unreleased Tim Burton movie. In fact, if ever Jack Skellington formed a puppet based indie band, they would probably sound like the Ralfe Band. It's music for a haunted fairground populated by emaciated ashen faced stick people with big dewy eyes who are content to merely sit on the well worn wooden steps of the waltzer and watch other people talk and snog. It's folk with a touch of paranoia (throw in a smidgen of nineties anti-stars Pavement). It's sad with a hint of more sad. It's awkward, stumbling and damned eerie. Ollie's cracked and racked vocals draw you reluctantly into his surreal world, a world of lo-fi waltzes for heartbroken lovers and Sunday morning dreamers. A world of simplicity and sincerity. Take a listen to 'Mirror Face' and especially 'St Marks Door' and be prepared to have your cynical heart slain. Then if that's too much for you, why not cheer yourself up with 'Attics', a jaunty instrumental that sounds like a bunch of pirates on acid, carousing in a Portugese brothel.  Anyone who appreciates simple affecting songs imbued with the spirit of Syd Barrett and containing enigmatic narratives redolent of Mark E. Smith and Leonard Cohen, sung in the frailest of voices against a backdrop of mentally ill country and western slacker boogie could do a lot worse than fall in love with the Ralfe Band.

Written by: John Haylock