Agincourt

Agincourt - Mirabella (1970)

cf.

Belle and Sebastian - Dog on Wheels (1997)

I was fortunate to buy an original  copy of Tigermilk when it first came out.  Belle and Sebastian offered a bit of a reset for indie music in Glasgow.  You would see them  hanging out regularly at Divine, downstairs at the Art School.  Andrew Divine provided  an eclectic soundtrack, with post punk co-existing with trip-hop, techno, northern soul, 60s psych and charity shop finds. The club felt relaxed, friendly and inclusive.  Stuart Murdoch’s literate pop songs  fitted with that ethos.  He portrayed the city almost as if a village, centred around the West End, providing a setting for small scale tales.  They were the antidote to so much else that was about during the Britpop era.  I became an immediate fan.  Dog on Wheels was one favourite, with lo-fi recording,  “Alone Again Or” brass, acoustic guitars and lyrics that referenced Glasgow.  You could dance to them as well. Too twee for some, but anything goes…

 

Whilst Tigermilk’s rarity is based on 1000 original copies, Agincourt’s privately pressed album Fly Away is reckoned to have had just 50 or 70 made,  sold to family and friends back in 1970.  There is really no chance that Stuart Murdoch could have ever heard Fly Away, yet drop a needle onto virtually any track and it could easily be a lost early Belle and Sebastian piece, sharing so much of the same deftness, spirit, beauty, and lyrical focus.  Kindred spirits over a quarter of a century apart.

Mirabella with tremolo guitars, jaunty rhythms and layered vocals is a captivating pop song, full of surprise and typical of the invention and atmosphere of the album.  This was created by Peter Howell, John Fernando and Lee Menelaus in a bedroom studio set up in Peter’s parents’ house in Hove.  With no time pressures, they were able to fit in recording after work during the spring and summer in an idyllic East Sussex setting.  Howell and Fernando had previously made a couple of private press records associated with local amateur theatre productions before recording as Agincourt.  The recruitment of Lee, provided much of the magic of the wonderful, gentle and dreamy Fly Away.  Her beautiful fragile vocals provided the Belle to Peter’s Sebastian.

Light and lithe, thankfully free of the patchouli drenched sound of many of their more famous psych-folk or prog contemporaries, Agincourt developed their own sound distant from the music business.  Howell admits having been a Moody Blues fan, but his music was miles away from the pomp, production, and pretension of big label sounds.  Instead, out of step with the times, you can hear French pop, folk, jazz, early 60s instrumental wig-outs and classical elements blended together with elements of electronica experimentation.  Many of the songs you can even dance to.  Anything goes...