| This was going to be easy. You were gonna get the punka-party line. Picture for a moment eight persons, playing instruments including a mandolin and harmonica- no doubt you know what they sound like. Trashy pop? Winsome folk? Well, you'd be wrong. Joined by an acute appreciation for the blues, magnified by the desire for pure enjoyment, founding Mules' members James Lesslie (mandolin), Tim Burke (piano) and Ed Seed (vocals, drums) soon found others to share their vision, with Van "Carney" Rothschild and Duncan Brown (guitar) being followed by Dave O'Brien (Double bass) and trumpeters Helen Gibson and Rhydian Griffiths. Yet as Seed explains 'Our meeting was fairly organic; there was nothing surprising in how we met.'
With the obligatory Dylan, musical influences prove as diverse as The Specials and Ry Cooder. As a result The Mules remain difficult to categorise. Sure it's low down'n'dirty swamp blues, with a generous dosage of guitar and harmonica, but their fractured songs are intimate and memorable giving them a new vituperative edge. 'Ed's definitely the next Phil Collins' Lesslie asserts confidently. Which is nice. At Sunday Roast the assembled fashionistas are treated to a handful of country-fried originals. Seed's vocals swing nimbly from a whisper to a wail, from the sweetest come-ons to the lustiest blood-gorged growls. Tunes are subtly soaring ("Jesus On The Main-Line") or rutting in the muck ("Open Up Now Lady"), but not every sketch is an exercise in melodic crunching blues, as the slurred wordplay of "Seasonticketholder" gives way to the cranky rhythm and lulling grace of "And Then Again." It's an engaging soundtrack of liquor'n'machismo, but an appreciation of '60s clichés shows through when they ditch the stylistic conservatism.
We humbly suggest you indulge to the full. So, pull up an armchair, uncork the bottle and get deliriously drunk with The Mules. We imagine they have already.
Emma Byrne
Oxford Student, 12th June 2003.
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