BECKY N: Two Wheels EP

Before I tell you why I love this little record and why you will love this little record, let’s get the lo-fi issue out of the way. Many years from now with a daisy-chain of shining records behind her, Becky N’s swelling army of admirers are going to follow it back to where it all began and dig up “Two Wheels”. An accidental collection of four songs recorded on either side of the planet by a poet with a portable microphone tied to her hair, this record electronically crackles and hisses with 21st century basement bootleg distortion – digitally remastered to iron out as much of the creases as possible, and dressed in effects, if audio-purity is high on your agenda then you’re barking up the wrong musical tree.

However – and this is a mighty big HOWEVER – if, like me, you can hear past hiss and whirr to the heart of music and the song itself, and if you dig the living, breathing atmosphere of lo-fi (a door slams in the background, a chair creaks, hair swishes, a cricket cranes his head to listen) then you’ll quickly hear why so many folk love Becky’s music. The unfortunate thing about it, is that the why it’s so loveable is as intangible as a daydream. Trying to define it, or put it into a box of convenient genre-titling is near impossible – it’s a bit folky I guess, a bit pop, lyrically simple on the surface but blatantly hiding layers and layers, verging on existentialist in the being of lines like “You wrote me a letter from across the swimming pool”, or “Salt tipped tongue tastes/Air full with yellow/Crinkled sand and/A gust under earlobe”. But ultimately it all comes back to the fact that despite it being all these things, it is always that something else, that “other” that makes it really special.

The songs might all be painted with the same Becky N brush, but each one exists in its own right as something worthwhile. The quirky ode of “Pink Flowers”, the colourful landscape of “The Patches”, the sublime and quite brilliant songwriting of “Don’t Ask Me Again What I Dreamt”, and finally the oh so simple melodic yet catchily stratospheric closing “Autopilot”. In fact as the most recent song, “Autopilot” is an ear-watering glimpse at where this could potentially go given some decent recording equipment and really much more of the same behind it. It is a song that sticks in your head like vapours of gum, the cool switch into the magical “I have dreams of wasting away…”, like something from the late 60s, harmonic and other-wordly, and singing like it is purely from a love of singing songs, unpretentious and pretty damn beautiful.

Do I really need to say anymore?

Listen to “Autopilot” from BECKY N’s “Two Wheels” EP:

For more info about Becky N visit: http://www.myspace.com/beckynnnn

Download “Two Wheels” for FREE

from the STORE link at the top of this site.

CATEGORIES:BECKY N, QUIXODELIC RECORDS, REVIEWS