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Sheelanagig – Cirque Insomnia

8 June 2012

Dating from the 11^th and 12^th centuries, sheela-na-gigs are crude, carved portrayals of naked female forms with oddly pronounced vulvas. The origin and significance of the carvings remain mysterious; the pedigree of the band to whom they lend their name is clearer but no less interesting. Products of Bristol’s vibrant music scene, Sheelanagig recorded their 2006 debut, Uncle Lung, at the studio of Portishead bassist and prominent Bristolian Jim Barr. Two more records followed and punctuated the band’s notoriously high-octane festival appearances.

Sheelanagig’s latest album, Cirque Insomnia, finds the band once again stirring their crowded melting pot of world musical influences. The wittily titled “Lost In Transitvania” is a whirling, particle-accelerator of a track. It smashes together violin-dominated eastern European folk dances, expansive Cuban-inflected lead guitar lines and hazy Surf-tinged vocal harmonies, somehow wrestling them all into the structure of a loose eight-bar blues. But as they move seamlessly into a 14^th Century monophonic dance called “Lamento Di Tristano,” fleshing out the thin lines of the original with rolling Irish folk sounds, the five-piece begin to reveal their astonishing flexibility.

Balkan folk music is a constant throughout the record, but rather than confining the band, it offers them a basis for experimentation. “Cirque Insomina” opens with tango sounds, reminiscent of Philippe Cohen Solal’s Gotan Project, but soon explodes into a ska tune that lays the band’s Eastern European melodies over skanking offbeat rhythms. The ska feel continues, with further polyrhythmic embellishments, on the band’s humorous account of an aging vampire, “Vlad The Inhaler.” With “Ot Azoi / Der Heyzer Bulgar” they introduce a medley of traditional Yiddish folk tunes that starts creeping and filmic before rushing to a pulsing, dancing crescendo. This energy is sustained in “Yaffle’s Banquet” and in the tour of Albania and Macedonia that underlies a second medley, “Yovano Yovanke / Shkodra / Tantsuva.”

The album closes with “The Magic Lantern,” a bloody cautionary tale about “two star-crossed lovers.” The song is superb, but its narrative success actually highlights the record’s biggest failing. Although Cirque Insomnia is a fine combination of original songs and judiciously selected traditional folk tunes, it clearly keeps one eye on the band’s neurone-firing live performances. Every track is designed as a standalone incitement to dance, and although this makes the record exhilarating, it does little to tie together all the diverse musical threads that Sheelanagig employ. Doubtless, tracks like “Vlad The Inhaler” and “The Magic Lantern” show that the band are adept at creating funny, compelling short yarns, but somehow these never quite join up to give the album a wider sense of sonic cohesiveness or narrative continuity.

Review by: Matthew Ellis