Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Lincoln – an update


So that worked out quite well then. Last March I did a post about Lincoln, my favourite ever alt-country band from Stoke Newington. If you’ve never heard of them, they released two mini-albums and a full-length back in 2001 and 2002 then disappeared. I wrote the post wondering out loud what happened to them. I now have an answer. It’s nothing scandalous or titillating. It’s not even, as one commenter suggested, due to inter-band friction. Just the boring, everyday realities of getting that little bit older, having families and other commitments and exercising freedom of movement to other parts of the country.

So now I know. I also found out that Alex Gordon and Matt Dowse from Lincoln formed a band called Heed the Thunder, along with some people from West Country ska-punks Citizen Fish. Their myspace reveals that the songs are in a similar vein to the sound of Lincoln, only not quite as good. Still worth checking out though. They released an album on Falsify Records, but the label site doesn’t seem to be there anymore, so I can’t encourage you to buy. Just listen to a couple of tracks from their myspace page. (by the way, Crum Hall, the Lincoln drummer hits skins on Street Life, which makes it a reunion of half the old band).

Download: Heed the Thunder – Street Life
Download: Heed the Thunder – Will to Succeed

One of the other good things arising from that post was that I managed to put some band members who had lost touch back in contact with each other (and even someone else from a fairly well-known band back in touch with one of Lincoln). But best of all for me, Matt sent me a copy of Lincoln’s last ever release, the New Partner EP. There are four tracks, one is Blood on the Streets off the Mettle album, So Glad I Came which was recorded during the album sessions, a wonderful cover of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s New Partner, and final track Xmas 13 which I think is a home recording.

It’s all lovely stuff, and a perfect endpiece to the recording career of what was a great band. Sure there’s some regret from me that not enough other people thought they were great and that Lincoln are no longer playing or releasing music. But then again, I’ve not had to put up with them recording rubbish albums and hoping that the next one will be better. Just four CDs of high quality music. Age will not wither them.

Here are a couple of tracks from New Partner. Enjoy.

Download: Lincoln – New Partner
Download: Lincoln – So Glad I Came

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jesus Tim, you hero. I absolutely loved Lincoln. I remember that post actually, and not quite believing that they weren't more successful than they were. Brilliant group in my book.

Lizabelle said...

Hey, thanks for this! I loved Lincoln, too.

...nor the years condemn.

Anonymous said...

thank you from Russia.
You doing a great job.

Veter

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your research!
Lincoln = Great Band!

Bernard

Unknown said...

out of bandwidth! Can you possibly send me "New Partner?" Thanks!

The Daily Growl said...

Hey Kevin

The track was uploaded to a file host I no longer use. I've re-uploaded it. Enjoy!

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