Bands You Really Should Listen To - Part 1

The Strange Death Of Liberal England

The Strange Death Of Liberal England are a six piece, male and female, band from Portsmouth that create epic and sweeping music. This collective use a number of instruments including e-bowed guitars, glockenspiel, flutes, clarinet and drums. It's post-rock music, but not as we know it.

Some excellent reviews have come from the right places. Firstly, BBC Radio's Steve Lamacq has played them on his show, while The Fly magazine has called them "a breath of fresh air in these times of samey guitar bands". However, their best endorsement comes from being the influential Drowned In Sound readers choice for 2006.

Their ep, "stop/go happy/sad forward/forward", is completely sold out, but will get a full release soon on Boomhound Records. You can listen to songs such as "Motor In The Sky" here, in the meantime. This track contains the same huge vocal hooks as Arcade Fire, as female chanting blends perfectly with fuzzed guitars and chiming glockenspiel.

The excellently-titled , "Summer Gave Us Sweets But Autumn Wrought Division", comes across like Godpseed You Black Emperor, if they ever tried to write a hit single. The strings section here in this song is just magnificent.

The band also show plenty of diversity on "Mozart on 33", sounding like a more upbeat version of A Silver Mt Zion, who they share more than a few similarities with. However, The Strange Death.. still exert their own influence over these songs, and are not just plain copyists. This song builds from quiet introspective guitars before erupting into one big crescendo of noise.

It has been said that the band put on a great live show, lets hope there is a full UK tour to coincide with the ep's re-release.