George
A Week Of Kindness

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What their label says...

'A Week of Kindness' is the second album from the Manchester musical magpies. Their haunting anachronistic sound, heard in 2003's resoundingly successful debut album 'The Magic Lantern', resurfaces from its own very distinctive musical world. George’s adventures in bricolage gather strength in their new record, a coherent miscellany of bric-à-brac electronics and clockwork melody. It proffers to the listener the saddest, prettiest songs about early surgical cinema, living in memory or a fearful search for joy, that they will hear for a long time. The old-style "partners in chime" [Sleazenation] wish to sing their hearts out to you!

"This is so lovely and delightful that it’s difficult to describe. In glimpses this is Michael Varty and Suzy Mangion of Manchester, making this high melancholic beauty out of the most basic ingredients. Mostly Varty and Mangion playing a wide assortment of instruments, including: bass, guitars, banjo, cymbala, Wurlitzer, and an assortment of primitive keyboards. They are augmented by cello, clarinet, and viola on selected tracks. They make a strangely old-timey/timeless sort of pop music. An abandoned seaside amusement park, keeping company with the wind and it’s assorted ghosts. Almost antique, but quite alive and lively. They bring to mind a more melodically inventive edition of Low; but they are far more subtle, and adventurous ala Harry Nilsson. Suzy sometimes sings with our friends Piano Magic; and some of this resembles that outfit at it’s most sunny and bright. Or maybe if Kate Bush replaced Karen in the Carpenters" [George Parsons, Dream Magazine]

"There’s a massive tension in their music, starkly minimal with something nasty threatening to emerge, like a shattered wine glass in a costume drama dinner party. Nervous keyboards played like a school assembly recital; gentle but jagged rhythmic guitar strumming; strong, wavering voice like a mean-drunk Sandy Denny echoing around the big, dark hall. I can imagine all of their songs taking place in a microcosm of some phantasmagorical stately home; first a song for looking out from the upstairs balcony on some doomed frosty morning, then they add some pre-recorded voodoo drumming to evoke some guilt-fuelled Dionysian tryst in the spring-blooming garden. Maybe D.H. Lawrence had nightmares like this sometimes..." [Ben Haggar, Plan B]