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The Palace Lights : Download Single, 2006
“Blog Up is totally charmed by this single.”
Blog Up (FR)
“A marvellous piece of dreamy pop.”
Efecto Oregano (ES)
A deceptively jaunty tale of seaside suicide, set to an insistent keyboard figure and borne along with the sweetest melody. Taken from the third album Caught Laughing.
You can buy this download single here:
all releases
(Words On Music)
“This is only their second album, and it’s a beaut. A real gem that deserves wider attention.”
Careless Talk Costs Lives
“Mellow and mesmeric songs from a band to watch out for.”
Word (UK)
“Haunting and cinematic – excellent.”
Les Inrockuptibles (France)
”...Unas melodías más que agradecidas, sobre todo por la brillantez y la esperanza que despiden...”
Mondo Sonoro (Spain)
”...Anne Reekie canta con más somnolencia que Emma Pollock (y que Hope Sandoval)...Los amantes del pop sin ventanas tienen en este disco muy buenos motivos para ser felices...”
RockdeLux (Spain)
Track Listing: B-rock/I Didn't say/Got a reason/Doortime/Caught On/
Reeling As You Come Around Again/Talking A Hole In My Head/
He Goes, She Goes/There You Go/Old Friend/Flake
Leave Me Out Of This found fans all over the globe and was featured in over thirty lists of the best albums of 2003.
We recorded most of it ourselves at Anne's house (aka The Red Room) and some other bits with Owen Turner at The Sickroom in rural Norfolk. It was mixed by Phil Vinall (who has produced bands such as Pulp, The Auteurs and Elastica) in Notting Hill, London. Making the album was a bit of a logistical nightmare but, somehow, it all worked out ok in the end.
Lyrically, things got a bit more fraught (you'd have to ask Anne what she's singing about) but musically we happened upon a way of doing it that felt right. It's not exactly quiet-core but, in the main, it is a tranquil and languid affair. It got more than it's fair share of comparisons with shoegazey bands - much to our incomprehension. If anyone can spot the the chorus drenched, heavily reverbed guitars and the mumbling apologetic vocals it'd be nice to hear from you.
The album also marked the beginning of our long and happy association with Eric and Mark from Words On Music in the US. It was through them that Fiel Garvie's music made an appearance in (to us) such far-flung places as Taiwan, Japan and the Phillipines. Other Garv enthusiasts ensured that Leave Me Out of This got a release in the Netherlands, Brazil and Sweden.
Looking back on the album now we're all still pretty happy with it. Above all it's the songs that stand the test of time. It also looks exceedingly nice - with its sparkly metallic stars.
Reviews of Leave Me Out Of This
Listen to Leave Me Out Of This
¡Vuka Vuka! : Album, 2001
(Noisebox)
"Spooky. atmospheric, slightly grungy, slightly unhinged, pop music, with a no-bullshit girl singer form the UK. What more could you ask for in a band? Catchy songs? Check. Sexy voice? Check. Bad attitude? Check."
Splendid
"Vuka! Vuka! is a unique album that you really should take the time to investigate."
Organ
Track Listing: Right Out and Forced/Risk/Hold On/Better Gaze/A Man/Glass Faced Warrior/Dress Down/Difference of Me/Shuffle/Deliberately Alright/For What I Love/O.K.K.
The debut Fiel Garvie album was put together over a period of a year at a groovy all-valve studio in the wilds of Norfolk, England. The control room looks a bit like the flight deck of a spaceship in a 1950s science fiction b-movie. Kevin Van Green, who recorded the album, has worked with Tindersticks, Drugstore and Vince Clarke from Erasure. It's Vincey's very own beat box that you can hear tick-a-ticking its way through 'Right Out and Forced'. In fact we almost called the album Vince Clarke's Drum Machine' (featuring Fiel Garvie).
¡Vuka Vuka! means 'Wake Up, Wake Up' in Zimbabwean (Mbele) dialect. It is also the slang for a natural form of Viagra . . .
Reviews of ¡Vuka Vuka!
Listen to !Vuka Vuka!
Didn't Say : 7" and cd single, 2003
(Foundling)
"The two songs on this single are simply amazing"
Taste
"This is the most touching, achingly gorgeous pop song this rather choked, caught-for-words boy has heard for a long, long time."
Drowned In Sound
Track Listing : I Didn't say/Buzzfisch
Didn't Say features on Leave Me Out Of This and Buzzfisch doesn't. Both found favour in a number of unexpected quarters with DS getting played on UK, Spanish and Swedish national radio and Buzzfisch being preferred by people who like their music to come in a more electronic and left-field form.
Many people have said that DS has something of the Phil Spector about it - which is very gratifying. Other people have said it sounds like The Pixies. Sounds like a grand hybrid to us.
Listen to Didn't Say
Reviews of Didn't Say
Difference of Me/Risk : 7" single, 2001
(Noisebox)
"The sound of a band on their way to somewhere wonderful"
Time Out London
"Weirdly affecting, promising stuff"
NME
Two tracks from ¡Vuka Vuka! on a neatly packaged, limited edition, single.
Colour You : single, 1998
(Foundling)
"Half purist indie, half supra-Nineties uber groove with a heavy seasoning of downright misery. One for your moments of intense introspection"
Melody Maker
Track Listing : Colour You/Little Lie/Swing.
We made a bit of a mistake with the choice of main song (Colour You). It hadn't been around for very long and we were probably taken in by its novelty. Little Lie is a soaring, swooping epic - one of our favourite recordings based around a repetitive human heartbeat. And, though you'd never gather it, very little of the CD was played by people. There's a lot of sampling - the later album, ¡Vuka Vuka! however is played by people.
Listen to x xxxx
reviews of Colour You
For What I Love : single, 1997
(Foundling)
"A free flowing, fast moving babbling brook, an emotional lava of conciousness. Music you could drown in. Unlikely to win them mass adulation in this especially conservative era of rock music"
Melody Maker Single of the Week.
Track Listing : For What I Love/Speakover/She Dotes On Him
You don't get many For What I Loves to the pound. It is a one off and there's nothing else like it on the planet. Recorded in Leyton, London, UK in an atmosphere of some trepidation. The first time we went to have a look at the studio, we went to the local pub and witnessed a bloke get glassed in the face.
Reviews of For What I Love
Glass Faced Warrior : single, 1996
(Foundling)
"The Residents covering Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit. [n.b. not literally . . . sadly.] Fiel Garvie could be a real find."
Melody Maker
Track Listing : Glass Faced Warrior/See Monsters Crumble/Risk
The Drummers of Burundi sneaked onto Glass Faced Warrior while we were sleeping. The engineer and drummer stayed late one evening and managed to fuck this song up with preposterous banging noises throughout the choruses. Probably our most fractious recording session ever - a battle of wills. See Monsters is a maudlin symphonic thing informed by Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Risk is, well, a lo-fi torch song. A & R people tend to like Risk - still can't find anything wrong with it though.
Reviews of Glass Faced Warrior
Foundling
Is us. No big shakes - even though it is nice to able to do exactly what you want from stormtrooping the recording to creating sleeve artwork. All you need to start a label is some music and a pile of cash to burn in metaphorical KLF stylee.
Fiel Garvie discography
albums
singles
compilation tracks