Our house band Dirty Murph & the Kerbside Sorters returns this month with a new album and bonus single release – just in time for Christmas!
More Songs about Consultancy and Bins is the band’s third major release and its most ambitious recording yet – at 12 songs across its two ‘consultancy’ and ‘bin’ sides, it qualifies as a concept album by Murph standards. As fans of The Murphs have come to expect, the musical programme features original compositions alongside re-purposed parody versions of classics, this time by acts including Elvis, The Smiths, Irma Thomas and ABBA.
Musical styles and environmental consultancy issues covered include an R&B homage to the wheelie bin, a punk take on client confidentiality, a Euro-pop treatment of side-waste policy, and an 80s indie lament about font styles. As ever, the trials of resource management are treated with both expert insight and light-heartedness; as the band sings on Dire Straits tribute Consultants of Bins: “We’re the consultants, the consultants who play waste comedy.”
The album is preceded by special single release Air Quality, a parody tribute to the song Valerie by indie rock band The Zutons – later famously covered by Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse – which sees the band widen its thematic interest to the UK’s illegally high levels of air pollution. To reflect the change of thematic direction and celebrate the increased gender diversity brought by the song’s vocalist, Hannah Gillie, Air Quality is released under the collective alter ego of Emmanuelle Zeurtlein & the Stillage People.
The track takes inspiration both from mid-2000s indie and a series of legal battles fought by environmental lawyers ClientEarth over the UK Government’s failure to develop an adequate air pollution plan. In February 2018 the high court found in favour of ClientEarth, ruling that the approach being taken to tackle pollution was “not sufficient” in 45 local authority areas.
Both releases feature the largest line-up of musically spotlighting consultants to-date as the band swells to an octet with the addition of Hannah Gillie on vocals and George Beechener on saxophone. They join Mark Cordle on vocals, Peter Jones on vocals, guitar, bass and washboard, Ann Ballinger on flute, Ian Cessford on keys and bin lid, Steve Watson on guitar and bass, and Pete Bennet on drums.
Consultant and guitarist/songwriter Steve Watson said:
“We’re all really pleased with how the album has come out: it features our most confident playing to date and some of our best song writing. While Coldplay might be making headlines for their refusal to tour until they can do so carbon neutrally, we are confident that our performance schedule of playing only one show a year at the Eunomia summer party puts us at the vanguard of musical sustainability.”
Listen to the whole album here:
