"...just about the best available bridge between lo-fi Americana
and the woody thrum of archaic Britfolk"
- Q Magazine.
Candidate play London's 12 Bar Club on 11th September.
Denmark Street, London, WC2. Nearest tube: Tottenham Court Road. Stagetime 10pm.
Candidate's new album, Oxengate, is out now. Oxengate is available to order from Amazon.co.uk here.
Candidate music is available to download from:
iTUNES.
VIRGIN.
NAPSTER.
HMV.
SUNDAY TIMES RECORD OF THE WEEK 2.7.7
*****
Candidate are Britain’s most tasteful, witty and thoughtful band, but in the world of rock/pop, this has rarely been an advantage. Their fifth album combines 1970s singer-songwriter sounds with vaguely alternative guitar pop, flavours it with the sensibilities of English folk music and thirtysomething nostalgia for a vanishing world, and peppers the gaps between tracks with authentic-sounding “field recording†fragments. The joyous Amsterdam gives a lads’ trip to the notorious fleshpot the feel of a traditional tune, and Swear It Will Snow splices Nick Drake’s pastoral euphoria with West Coast hippie harmonies. The Everlasting Arm thrums like early Fairport Convention, and Marie Alexander is the slow-burning acoustic epic of your dreams. Critics can’t recommend Candidate enough, but you lot buy millions of Coldplay albums instead. As they sing on the closing track, The Sky: “We’re wasting our time again. But we make beautiful stuff and that might be enough.†STEWART LEE
Candidate forage for fragments of old folk songs in British hedgerows, and shove them into cleft sticks driven deep into mud effigies of John Cale. Sometimes they fasten broken Hollies albums to the side of Harry Nilsson with chewing gum stolen from Spacemen 3. Sometimes they just sit and watch bees.
Candidate have had albums nominated as Record of The Year by The Sunday Times, BBC Radio 2 and Rolling Stone.
The theme music to Johnny Vegas' BBC TV series Ideal is 'Song Of The Oss' by Candidate.
Visit our website at www.candidatesite.co.uk
