Listening To Careful Of Your Keepers, by This Is The Kit.

It is Thursday afternoon in my little corner of the universe. The weather has changed in the last few days. It feels quite autumnal as I gaze out of my kitchen window. There is still a lot of colour in my little garden. I am looking out at flowers called cosmos swaying in the breeze, and sweet peas which my niece Katherine gave me the seeds for. Katherine also kindly gifted me the music I am listening to at this very moment which is the most recent album by This Is The Kit called Careful Of Your Keepers. Kate Stables and Rozi Plain from the band also signed it for me which was nice of them. So, this is what I thought I’d tell you about today. The album was recorded in Bristol in December 2022 and produced by the Welsh musician Gruff Rhys who you may know from the band Super Furry Animals. I know him from his influence in awakening attention to the music of Wendy & Bonnie who I wrote about several years ago. As well as the band I saw in Frome last week consisting of Kate, Neil, Rozi and Jamie, there are also major contributions from Kate’s husband Jesse Vernon on various instruments and also horn arrangements. There is bassoon, flugelhorn, trombone, tenor sax, piano, and kora players on the album, and the Be OK choir on one track. If asked how I would describe the music of this album I think I would say something like folk-rock, with elements of jazz and psychedelia, but Kate Stables is a unique singer-songwriter poet who is hard to define.

Two people who know more about the band than me have said that this is their favourite Kit album, and I must say on first listen I found it immediately more accessible than Bashed Out which took several playing’s until it weaved its magic on me. Or that might be because I have got more attuned to their sound after seeing them live for the first time. That is especially true of the opening track Goodbye Bite which is the song I filmed in Frome and put on this blog page. I find Kate’s lyrics very poetic, but also enigmatic. This song mentions biting someone and the following song Inside Out mentions chewing, “I chew, chew, choose you”. It might be a metaphor for seeing how a relationship feels or tastes. The songs will mean different things to different people, as all art should. It has occurred to me that maybe Kate wrote these songs during lockdown which might have influenced, even subconsciously her mood and writing. I thought that because of some of the song titles such as, Stuck In A Room, Doomed Or More Doomed, Inside Out, I might be barking up the wrong tree there though. There is a lot of clever humour in her words, even if they are quite dark sometimes. In one song she says getting involved with someone is like playing ‘emotional Buckaroo’. You get the feeling that Kate thinks deeply about the meaning of life, and mulls it over in her songs, but she doesn’t necessarily have any answers, just questions. 

Sometimes the lyrics are sparse, as in Take You To Sleep which to me is about empathy for someone who is suffering, and all you can do is be there for them. It says, ‘give me your hand’, as does More Change which says, ‘If we’re holding hands, We’ll walk at the same speed’. (I urge you to watch the video of this song below because I think it is brilliant and funny. a work of art) The relentless rhythm of Jamie's drums and Neil's guitar are particularly excellent on This Is Where The Sky Gets Big. The title track Careful Of Your Keepers seems to me to be about the passing of time and the inevitability of old age, and how nature eventually reclaims everything. I think they performed Scabby Head And Legs in Frome, but I don’t know what it is about. Stuck In A Room might be one of my favourite tracks, short and sweet, with Kate’s spoken words and the excellent horn section accompaniment. Dibs brings the album to a glorious close. In Frome Kate used the audience to sing the refrain ‘Be OK’ which the choir sing on the album. The music descends into fuzzy psychedelia behind Kate’s voice before an abrupt ending that leaves you wanting more. I highly recommend this album, so thank you very much to Katherine for such a nice gift.

My Cosmos, Sweet Peas, & Other Plants.