CD Review - Sweet Billy Pilgrim, ‘We Just Did What Happened And No One Came’

So we’ve got a bit more guitar music nowadays, it doesn’t mean everything is tickety-boo. Katie Melua never leaves us thanks to the vacuum-heads at Radio 2; the Brits believe it is ‘street’ to nominate a satirical cartoon group as ‘best band’ and Richard Ashcroft is somehow still seen as credible despite sounding like an MOR version of Westlife.

However, there is a reason to stay awake through the spiteful winter months.  Yes our long-suffering comrades, hope has come - after getting your head round the rather strange band-name - in the form of We Just Did What Happened And No One Came by Sweet Billy Pilgrim.

Crashing around in a pretty little melodic drone, first track on We Just Did What Happened And No One Came, Atlantis,
is full of crunching backing beats and sounds of children playing. This
opener is tender to the point of endless tear-jerking and as
conventional as this album gets, in that the words ‘possible single’
are written all over it.

A neat little banjo riff is the main feature to Stars Spill Out Of Cups, supported by a lightly brushed snare drum. The track then treats
us to a sweet little chorus that aches in sincerity, bringing back
memories of the Nordic group Magnet. It all becomes very stirring with
the use of e-bows and chanting in the middle section, but gently
settles back into a synth/feedback playout.

At first, God In The Details may sound like its being performed by a
detuned circus, but that is part of the Sweet Billy Pilgrim need to subvert all that is
predictable. If this song were a truffle in a large selection box, it
would contain a moistened badger tongue with whipped lemons. We don’t
mean that it will somehow make you feel nauseous. No, it’s just rogue,
insane and thoroughly odd. But this is undoubtedly a good thing.

At first, In The Water I Am Beautiful exposes us to a heart-tugging
tune but, as always, this develops into something altogether different.
Most shocking of all is when the song spontaneously drenches in and out
of heavy distortion: now how’s that for a surprise? Sadly its fantastic
chorus only gets one proper play, ending before Sweet Billy Pilgrim have dealt their
musical hand. But the need to tease and hold back at all levels makes
it all the more interesting.

Black Flag is the penultimate album track and a personal highlight.
Even the most cynical of us will warm to its swelling brass,
Hammond and string section, underpinned by groovy, yet sparse backbeat.
For some reason it sounds like REM would if they were inventive and
still wrote good songs.

With only nine tracks, We Just Did What Happened And No One Came is easily digestible for those
people who like a bit of musical challenge. Thankfully this one will
stump those lame cultural commentators who endlessly compare everything
to Chris Martin et al. This is miles ahead, of what can be frankly deemed ‘pop’ music.
The fact is that things look a lot rosier with this bag of
weirdly-named innovators blurring genre boundaries. If such a thing
couldn’t be done anymore, then we’d suggest that that the world should
end prematurely, as is now.

[review by Jack Johnson]