Antigen Records

Description

Big Sea, Rev Simpkins’ new album and illustrated book is a life-affirming meditation on hope during dark times. This new collection of exuberant and eccentric songs was written during the Rev’s diagnosis, treatment and recovery from cancer and drummer James De’ath’s illness with sepsis. What resulted was an emotive celebration of the peaks and troughs of life and death told through off-kilter songs about east coast creeks, shattering storms, mystic pelicans and the Colchester martyrs.

The Reverend Matthew Simpkins is best known to antigen afficionados for his heavy-weight hollering in gospel fiddle duo Sons of Joy. And he is, in fact, a real vicar – from the fourth generation of his family to be ordained priest in the Church of England. Prior to ordination, Matt was a professional musician. He collaborated with Kenney Jones of the Small Faces to reconstruct the orchestral parts of their 1968 psychedelic masterpiece Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, and gained notoriety through his raucous and melodious exploits in FuzzFace. The Reverend’s 2008 solo album, Babbler & Crow, and 2009 LP, Lions were praised by the national folk and music press, and were heralded by the legendary poet-musician Martin Newell. Eleven years since the last Rev album, Matt’s unexpected illness brought with it an opportunity to make new music.

Rev Simpkins’s distinctive sound is a brew of outlandish tunefulness, string-snapping fingerpicking, and sanctified psychedelia. Shades of the Kinks, Captain Beefheart, and Pavement meld with church choirs and pipe organs, pre-war Gospel Blues, strings, brass bands, and Bert Jansch style finger-twanged guitar. Big Sea features singer-songwriter Ady Johnson, Daniel Merrill (Dead Rat Orchestra, Sons of Joy), and Toby Bull (FuzzFace) and was recorded in Cornard (Suffolk), Colchester (Essex) and Cairo (Egypt) in the spring of 2020.

The CD is housed in a 32-page saddle-stitched softback book, with lyrics typeset and illustrated by artist Tom Knight, adding further life to the album’s striking images and sentiments. Tom, who comes from Mersea Island, is described by The Sunday Times as ‘skilled… multitalented… deserves to be better known’.

“If you can imagine Tom Waits collaborating with early Captain Beefheart on a set of folk-psyche songs, you’ll be somewhere close to the sound of ‘Big Sea’… this is utterly intriguing from start to finish.” (9/10 – Vive Le Rock)

“There is an extraordinary intensity about this album… dark but sublime musings on mortality, sin and the divine… intelligent and articulate work couched in never less-than-interesting and often breathtaking musical arrangement… I can only say I am deeply grateful for a unique encounter.” (5 stars – R2R)