July 8th: ...The most beautiful mistake of the year.

King Creosote- Radge Weekend Starts Here (Fence, 2001)


Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote, is very probably Scotland's most prolific musician.I've lost count of how many albums he's put out by this point (50? Maybe?) and it's impossible to be sure, because you will never hear all or even most of them: the majority are limited-run CD-Rs on his own label, the acclaimed Fence Collective based in Fife, Scotland.
In addition to his self--released CD-Rs and Fence LPs, KC has put out a couple of albums for Warners/679 and a fair few for Domino- these tend to include several songs rerecorded from rarer releases and are well worth a buy.
Radge...is one of the limited-run albums, which i was lucky enough to pick up at a gig. Like all of KC's work, what holds it together is a) Kenny's frankly lovely voice and b) the quality of the songwriting.  Radge...is relatively light on the dictaphone-tastic and spoken word tracks which characterise his CD-Rs, and includes at least 3 songs which stand up with the best of his work. Firstly, a cover of  Lone Pigeon's 'Heaven Come Down Tonight' which takes an already beautiful song and rearranges it with amazing vocal harmonies; Handwashed, apparently the album's 'Calvinist disapproval' moment-sample lyric, "It's great that you hollow out canoes"- and my favourite track, 'Mantra-rap'. Ace arrangement, lovely vocals, clever yet affecting lyrics- there's no way to really go wrong with that.