Alasdair Roberts’ songs are difficult to digest. Like a large pill you can’t quite swallow, that lodges toward the back of the throat, they are dense, layered, poetic ballads coupled with a forcefully picked acoustic guitar, abrasively fragile vocals and a thick Scottish accent. His new self-titled album is not the kind of thing you put on while washing dishes. But it’s the kind of album you go back to again and again, trying to parse the lyrics, trying to understand why these songs grate at the base of your spine. Roberts will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on him.
Roberts: I’ve not yet seen Mike Leigh‘s most recent, widely acclaimed film Mr. Turner, but a few months back, at the recommendation of a friend, I watched one of his earliest works, Nuts In May. I thought it was very enjoyable and pretty hilarious—at least very funny to begin with, but I came to realise that it soon takes the viewer to some darker places. It concerns a sanctimonious, middle-class, vegetarian, bearded, sandal-wearing folk-singing fellow from the Home Counties and his girlfriend going on a camping trip in the country, only for their back-to-nature attempt to be disrupted by a neighbouring fellow camper with different priorities.
Video after the jump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptugM-zad9A
