Whisperinandhollerin did a very cool feature on us last year, but as it’s a site with numerous different writers we didn’t take it for granted that the album would be received equally well.  We were therefore overjoyed to read this nine-out-of-ten review:

“Erudite and devious, intelligent and mischievous, Lupen Crook’s songs of modern day dirt and decay have the sort of resonance that has stood London’s best singer/ songwriters from Ray Davies to Peter Perrett in such good stead along the way…  In our bland X-Factor-endorsing world, we need cocksure bastards of this calibre to vigorously shake things up.”

Rock ‘n’ Reel’s R2 magazine was similarly enthusiastic, giving the album a thoughtful and measured four-out-of-five review:

“… his lyrics are pithy and elegant.  In fact this raggle-taggle dandy has just what one craves each time one faces a review: wit, articulacy, invention, a keen ear.”

Craig Haggis of Porky Prime Cuts praises the effort that went into the press package.  Thanks Craig, we wrote and designed that ourselves… we ARE the record label!

“The Pros and Cons … is a challenging album, consuming the sounds of the Balkans, musical theatre and the New Wave of New Wave, not always deliberately. It ends up as a stir fry using leftovers and flavours that clash, providing a 41-minute dish that both sparkles the tastebuds and leaves you feeling bloated. I can think of the Libertines…  in using intelligence with pace; glamour with individuality.”

Pierre’s review at La Blogotheque has tested our rusty schoolboy French to its limits.  Even with the help of Google Translate, we’re none the wiser.  If you’re more au fait with the French tongue than us, check it out.

Subba-Cultcha covers all bases, describing the album as “a sort of slightly forceful folky pop rock”.  Mind you, the reviewer also compares the German passage in Sleeping Lions to an excerpt from  a Hitler speech.  We respectfully suggest that he translates it!

“The thing with this album is half of the songs are brilliant and the other half are distinctly average, making makes this album more lopsided than a table with only two legs. Fans of Lupen Crook’s earlier work will love this record and everyone else will love half this record.”

Over at Velvet Coalmine, Rhian Jones subjects the album to a characteristically rigorous analysis, picking up on its themes of “the crooked, the feral, the raw, the hopelessly romantic” and concluding that:

“The Pros and Cons of Eating Out… maintains the same dignified distance from the mainstream and the metropolis which granted Crook’s debut a distinction from the post-Libertines litter, and which continues to set him apart from his peers.”

Finally, congratulations to The Medway Broadside on its launch yesterday.  What better way to celebrate than with a Lupen Crook album review?

“Somehow, Lupen Crook has managed to blend so many different genres and styles into one and, in doing so, created something rare, inimitable and simply outstanding.”

Can’t say fairer than that.  Hg x

“Lupen Crook is a true original and an exceptional talent, a one off in the truest sense of the word… If you don’t find something to love in here, you are probably dead inside and don’t deserve your ears.”

“… a rabble pop both true and fresh.  From the renovating strata of Sleeping Lions to the spiralling joy of Dorothy Deserves, via the bliss of Pirate’s Wife, the artist masters his subject without ever domesticating it.“

“When at full pelt on a track such as Devil’s Son, Crook’s voice fits fine into a faux pas indie outfit, but when he’s doing his best Daniel Johnston impression he becomes intolerable, acting as a ‘voice of the people’ that no one really wants to hear.”

“It can be over-wrought and indulgent, and the Murderbirds often escape into very pedestrian rock. But then there are moments when you glimpse Lupen Crook’s talent; the bacchanalian folk-punk of ‘Pirate’s Wife’ and the delicate and melancholic folk melodies of ‘World’s End’, while ‘Devil’s Son’ is edgy and menacing until it’s bludgeoned to death beneath the rock.“

“…this is the kind of record that attempts to make grand statements on almost everything while concurrently managing to say almost nothing. The one redeeming feature is backing band The Murderbirds, whose performance is credibly passionate given the pretentious nonsense they are often supporting.“

“… some of the quieter moments are bearable.“

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“A truly memorable and gorgeously pure album that you should seriously think about cherishing, for it is a very lavish production indeed. And almost finally ‘Hour Glass’ cements the case that Mr Crook’s third album well and truly has the perfect shape.“

“… another example of Crook’s bewildering talent as a songwriter, as well as the close relationship he obviously has with his band, The Murderbirds, whose backing brings these songs to another level, giving them a real fullness and depth.“

The first review that we received was a resounding five out of five in Artrocker magazine:

“It’s like taking Noah and the Whale, mistreating them in a grotty cellar for four years and forcing them to listen to nothing other than white noise and screaming cats.  As a result, each song on the record smacks of carnage, chaos and evil genius… a twisted masterpiece of confusing tempos, mammoth choruses and venomous lyrics that combine in haste to drag you down into the darkest corners of life.”

The Leeds Guide swiftly followed suit with a four out of five assessment:

“It’s the sound of a lonely soul set on fire by a baying mob of heretics. It’s the sound of grubby fingers on an antique piano. It’s the sound of grittiness, gak and the fear. It’s a good sound though, provided you have the stomach for such squiffy salubriousness.”

Elsewhere in the mainstream press, the reviewer for Uncut magazine seemed unconvinced, labelling the album “plodding polka punk” and dismissing Mr Crook as “just a naughty boy”.  We had to chuckle at that… cue lots of  “He’s not the Messiah” jokes.  (We’ll show you a rejected album cover idea one day – he very nearly was!)

NME didn’t seem to know what to make of things, bemoaning the fact that by not fitting into any particular ‘scene’, Mr Crook is always “the lone wolf at the back of the pack”.  We loved the description of  “enraged musings on the human condition delivered with Crook’s inimitable spitting tongue” but were somewhat mystified by the conclusion that the album is “introverted bedroom listening”.

Grassroots online reviewers seemed less concerned by subtleties of genre.  Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot gave it four out of five:

“… aimed at the dark underbelly of the human psyche, sometimes romantic and ocasionally introspective but always sharp as a tack, musically it veers wildly from soft ballad to violently chaotic, sometimes in the same song… a remarkably cohesive album and the different styles and influences within only serve to make it a more captivating and breathtaking listen.”

Over at Garsdale Spartak, Chris Lilly focuses on the band’s musicianship:

“there’s pots and pans and hubcaps being bashed everywhere, and chaos and noise and wild, and then there’s a guitar coming out of the riot that is filigree and bell-like and truly beautiful… They all support and sustain Lupen’s phenomenal song-writing, angsty, visionary, compelling. It isn’t always comfortable in his world, but it’s never dull.”

On Creative Boom*, Andrew Day presents a lengthy and perceptive analysis of the album’s themes:

“A ragged, eloquent album that rages, despairs, lusts and ultimately finds an uneasy solace in the understanding arms of friends, lovers and fellow misfits… more than anything, this is an album born of  a gang mentality sense of community and of a growing sense of artistic maturity.”

We’ve also spotted a couple of album launch gig reviews.  Ben Homewood, writing for The Fly magazine, was impressed by last Friday night at The Flowerpot:

“There is much to admire in Lupen Crook, unconcerned by the industry’s vacuity, they are a throwback to a time before blogs, hype and fashion ruled the roost.  A proper Friday night out.”

Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot were back for more at the Medway album launch:

“Tonight the more intricate folk aspect of Lupen Crook’s songs takes a back seat in favour of the more energetic punk element for the live experience. That’s not a bad thing though, the set is electric and the band are on fire.”

More to come, we hope!  If you’re one of the online reviewers we sent the album to a few weeks ago, be sure to let us know when you’ve published your thoughts.

* a week or so after this was published, Creative Boom took the decision to delete its regional hubs and so this review is no longer online.  Instead, click the link provided for a screenshot of the review, then right-click / ctrl-click and save to your own computer to be able to read it properly.

“Whilst it may initially feel like a comedown from the adventure of previous releases, about five listens in these songs get into you, and they stay, putting this up there with some of the best songs they have ever written. Having had this EP for about a week, my I-pod is starting to sigh with my predictability. It’s a compulsive listen that grows. Few bands are worthy of the near sycophantism. It’s a new dimension to what they do, these self-referential confessions told with elements of remorse. The context of this release makes each track poignant, with the themes never sounding more explicit than on ‘Devil’s Son.’”

As a semi-objective assessment of both what the band has been up to this year and the ideas behind this latest project, we think you might enjoy it.  It’s a great summary to read alongside our own two-part interview published last week.

You can read the feature here and download the EP here.

The Dysunited Kingdom remains the band’s heARTland, but it’s great to see the attention that the Great Fears & Curious Predictions EP is attracting from elsewhere.  The above list of countries shows where the EP’s mini-site visitors have come from so far.  Here are some review highlights that we’ve spotted…

DrunkenWerewolf:

“In its entirety Great Fears and Curious Predictions is everything I could have prayed for and more… the penmanship is flawless and fan or foe would be hard pushed to adequately criticise any aspect of the EP. It’s not often that a 5-track secures the position of release of the year, but I have a feeling Crook may have broken normal conventions.”

Zoom In:

“Lupen’s songs have always been malleable, a characteristic allowing them to be performed by Mr. Crook on his own, as well as by the various Murderbirds incarnations. As this EP clearly shows, the tunes hold up to such experimentation because they’re so strong to begin with.”

WhiteTapes (rough translation from German):

“That we need to reintroduce Lupen Crook & The Murderbirds to you when they’ve already put out two albums shows that something is clearly not right in the music business, because this great release from singer-songwriter Lupen Crook deserves much more attention.”

ByteFM (rough translation from German):

“Wonderful music for a lonely Saturday evening, or alternatively an active Sunday morning.”

2 гамбургера и 2 коки (very rough translation from Russian - can anyone help?):

“British musicians are incredibly generous; this time it is Lupen Crook And The Murderbirds.  Lupen Crook himself is an acoustic singer with a painful voice. As a part of The Murderbirds, he’s a melodramatic and devilish writer who mixes freak folk and rock.”

Also thanks to Jécoutedelamusiquedemerde and NO-NAME for their mentions and particularly to NME for the news story.  Everyone’s support is really appreciated.

huddersfield-daily-examiner-review

“Lupen Crook is an odd one… part Pete Doherty, part Percy Bysshe Shelley, spitting out his words in Estuary English in songs that are part-skiffle, part-ballad, part-cabaret (‘Lest We Connect The Crooked Family’) or dabbling in folkatronica (‘Scare Crows’)… The effect is individual, resolutely uncommercial and a psychologist’s dream.”

Read the full review here.

“… this is sincere. This is real.  Call it lo-fi-folk-punk-indie-dub-rockabilly or whatever it must be categorised as, the point is that it’s honest AND accessible, two words that very rarely get combined when discussing modern music.”

Teletext’s Planet Sound section follows suit, awarding eight out of ten:

“… a Too Rye Ay-era Dexys racket, full of brassy insouciance and a rickety piano like the best drunken night out. Huge skill behind the ramshackle charm.”

For the sake of balance, here’s a less than enthusiastic two-star review of the EP from The Skinny:

“Their coupling of London estuary indie with violins and mandolins is an obvious ploy to attain an air of authenticity, but Crook’s voice is too one-dimensional, too limited to deliver any tenderness when it’s called for.”

That’s fine, not everyone’s going to like it.  A factual correction to that one: the band left its former record label – a local indie rather than a major – by choice.

“… a rich tapestry featuring a myriad of elements that tell of dark tales wrapped with music hall reverie, sepia set skiffle shanties and a kick backing swoon of tail feather teasing smoked and shuffling skeletal rockabilly.”

LOSINGTODAY.COM‘s detailed, song-by-song review of The Lost Belongings EP is so packed with evocative imagery that it almost makes my eyes bleed red tears of joy.  It’s a fine description of what to expect.  Read the full review here.

“The sound of Lupen Crook And The Murderbirds is as likely to take you down a dark alley and kick the living daylights out of you as it is to look at you. Whilst it’s got a touch of the Anthony Newleys to it or even Bowie it picks up a harder edge that sets it apart, but retains the theatrics that gave both artists their early success. “The Lost Belongings” lashes out with punk sensibility, angry, passionate and overwhleming desire to rage against the bland. It’s dark almost Dickensian, dark stories fighting against hopelessness, because it’s stronger than that.”

Read the latest reviews on Fatea’s website here.