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Review: 'LARK'
'Bleeding Songs'   

-  Label: 'Standard Lamp Records'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '7th July 2014'

Our Rating:
Lark are a sextet fronted by Karl Bielik whose day job is as an abstract painter and director of Terrace Gallery, London. Needless to say he did the artwork.

This album has a raw, edgy sound which strikes for The Birthday Party post-punk territory with what are billed as "heavy basslines, raucous sounds and turbulent lyricism",

The band certainly look like a mean bunch of mofos but it will come a little surprise that as a wordsmith Bielik isn't a patch on Nick Cave.

Consumers be advised that Standard Lamp Records give the impression that this album, the band's fourth, contains all new material. In actual fact five of the twelve songs also appeared on their second album I Don't Got (Care In The Community, 2011). These are the title track, originally called Bleeding, The Bible Rhymer, Kong, Another Lover and The Scream.

Confusingly there's actually a track called I Don't Got which appeared on a previous album (Blink) along with The Mast.

The previous versions of these tunes are of a rawer quality, often almost akin to demos, I can see why they might want to re-record them but in the name of transparency the fact that they are remakes of older songs should be made clearer.

And, call me perverse, but I actually prefer the older versions even though the new takes were rapidly produced, recorded, mixed and mastered in just two days.

It's good to hear a band sticking resolutely to a straight rock format but I was left with a sense of a band trying just a little too hard to sound dark and dangerous.
  author: Martin Raybould

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LARK - Bleeding Songs