An Occasional Series of Cultural (Re)Discovery. Part 3.

British-Born Culture That You Might Have Missed and That Matters to Me.

Music. The Earlies.

A largely undiscovered masterpiece from 2004.

I was thinking about The Earlies this week, a band born in Lancashire in the 1990s who made an album of such beauty and brilliance that I was convinced that they were destined for greatness. These Were The Earlies (2004) is a rare album; beguiling, elegant, mystical, unusual, richly rewarding. I saw them perform in Aberdeen once; there were a dozen or so of them and maybe 20 in the audience. It was extraordinary.

I think that part of the band were American, but they were very much a part of the storied British folk tradition, albeit with some very modern sounds.

What sort of music did they play? Well, The Guardian didn’t really help with this; ‘country-meets-prog-meets-electronica symphonies’, though The Independent helped a little more with this ‘a very English kind of folk-psychedelia... with a smattering of Beach Boys harmonies’.

It’s funny how some bands that are so talented just don’t catch on; it’s hard to figure out why. I wonder if somehow The Earlies just didn’t really want to play the game. It seems that they almost made a comeback in 2015, but I can’t find much about that and it may not have happened.

I can’t find a physical copy of this album for sale anywhere, but it is on Spotify. I’ve just listened a couple of times, having not done so for at least 15 years and it still sounded beautiful. @theearlies