In the spring of 2023, we were overcome by a concept for a new disc and decided to fit it in before we set off to Sweden to record with our Sami friend out in the wilds of the north. The disc is a reflection of the idea that as the world seems to be a tricky and dispiriting place in so many ways, one way of dealing with things is to listen and dance to upbeat music, a sort of ‘fiddling whilst Rome burns’ approach, a bit like what sparked the Jazz Age during the Great Depression of the 1920s and 30s. The disc is entitled ‘And Even The Sheep Shall Dance’ after what Adam claims is a passage from Ezekiel “and when the world is lost in strife and the end times appear to upon us, cider shall be drunk, the music shall rise and even the sheep shall dance”. Apparently, this passage only exists in a few, rare, medieval versions, all of which have been suddenly been lost since Adam mentioned it. The album was recorded over a couple of evenings in our Under The Eaves studio in the middle of the Yorkshire Moors.
The accompanying graphic novel is an accident, born of a conversation on a journey to Cornwall.
Murray: “What on earth are we going to put in the booklet?”
Adam: “Well, I have had a completely stupid idea that we are definitely definitely not going to do.”
Murray: “Oh god. What?”
Adam: “Well, a sort of comic, telling what the sheep did in each track”
Murray: “That’s a ridiculously stupid idea.”
Adam: “Yes, I told you that”
The rest of the journey was spent listening to the finished tracks and working out the story - a story that turned out to be darker and more allegorical than we had expected, and revealed that, despite its undeniably danceable nature, our music had captured more of the darkness of our current times than we had intended and the despite being the ‘silly boys’ that Adam’s mother always describes us as, we might have some more sensible thoughts hidden deep down.
