26 October 2005

The Sad Song Co. (the fine art of responding to fan mail)





Just to show all of you out there that I do indeed read the emails you send my way, here's an excerpt from an email I received today, and my response in the form of a post.



To: The Genius behind Ear Farm
From: A Wanna-be Musik Nerd
Re: Snooping for band information

I realize at this point in your career in music journalism you are probably overwhelmed with a swell of requests and fan mail. However, I ask you to consider mine because well, the bands I'm asking about are really cool, you might find in your snooping (and probable listening to mp3s) that you like some of their stuff too, others might in fact enjoy links relating to them...
Without further fuss I want info on:

Unbelievable Truth

I know UT is broken up, but any links to downloads, band member updates (where is andy yorke??? is nigel powell's new project (the sad song co.) any good?), and any potential regroupings? (They did a show at the zodiac, london for katrina relief... any future plans?).

Ok ok you get the idea. I trust you to learn more in a day or two than I've known for years!

A Hopeful Fan

Okay, what do you think this site is?? The inside cover of Parade?!

Fine, you got me. So...honesty up front, I edited the above email to suit my purposes here and took out a few bits and a request for info on other bands, I think one is enough don't you?
(you might think this research took a long time but you'd be wrong)

So, here's what I know, from allmusic.com:
Named after the film by American indie favorite Hal Hartley, Brit-pop trio the Unbelievable Truth was formed in Oxford, England in 1994 by singer/guitarist Andy Yorke (the younger brother of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke), bassist Jason Moulster, and drummer Nigel Powell. Debuting in 1997 with the single "Building," the group built a growing fanbase on the strength of a series of EPs, including Stone and Higher Than Reason before issuing the full-length Almost Here in 1998.


Of course, as was mentioned in the email, they have since split up:
"As you probably already know, Unbelievable Truth has split up, Andy having decided to leave the band : "The last few years have been enjoyable and an amazing experience, but I feel that now is a good time to move on. I intend to pursue the other thing in my life which fascinates me, namely work involving Russia and Eastern Europe."
The gig at the Zodiac in Oxford on the 16th will be their farewell show. It will be recorded and released along with unreleased b-sides by the end of the year. There is also a new single (Advice to a lover) out on October 2nd featuring two b-sides : 'Some of these people' and the beautiful 'Whose side are you?'.
Nigel and Jason will continue with music. So hopefully we'll get to hear them again in the near future."

Then two years later there is this:
So, what's new on the UT front ?
- Nigel is now the drummer of the band Dustball, and also has his own solo project, the Sad Song Co.
- Jason and Jim : still making music but we don't know much about their current projects. they also sometimes play with the Sad Song Co.
- Andy has finished studying but doesn't have any plan to come back to music. (though he's made a short reappearance at a sad song co. gig, playing Roadside no.1 with Nigel, Jim and Jason, recently)


Brief history of the band from someone else HERE and you can see their "official"/dead site HERE

Okay, needless to say, the most interesting information I could come up with was about Nigel Powell and his side project The Sad Song Co. (you'll notice mention of an Andy Yorke solo show on this site) who happen to remind me a bit of They Might Be Giants.

here's a song totally worth a listen - Into the Hills

more songs by The Sad Song Co. are here and here

a few songs by Unbelievable Truth can be found here and strangely there's another blog that uses the same lame template as EAR FARM talking about the Sad Song Co. just last week...read it here

Other than that it seems that most links I find to Unbelievable Truth stuff are no longer valid.
Hope this helps a little bit and thanks for turning me on to The Sad Song Co., that "Into the Hills" song is nice.

1 comment:

crabby said...

Your fan, sorry to say, is a doofus. They only regrouped that one time after the break-up for Tsunami relief. Katrina, as if. Pfft.