Arts & Culture
Canute's Plastic Army - Building Walls (EP)

The Gig Monkey Review

An acoustic guitar and a voice can commit many musical crimes. They can also be something glorious and exhilarating. Canute’s Plastic Army are a duo who specialise in the latter – the intricate guitar work of Neil Mercer is both delicate and dynamic, flowing around the tour-de-force vocals of Anish Harrison – a singer blessed with incredible tone, control, range and the power of a fission reaction. It is a heady mix, and one that carries these three well written and poetic songs and a classic folk standard along with confidence.

Musically these are lyrical folk songs for the 21st century, with an unsettling darkness connecting the songs; even poppy tracks like Don’t You Hate It take a sardonic look at the negative side of life. But this is a darkness that is borne of an understanding of the bad things in the world and the fight to overcome them and consequently is an uplifting and positive collection of songs, even if it does end with a cracking version of Gallows Pole – hopefully not in a metaphoric finale.