A1 Don't Worry 2:12
A2 No Vacancies 2:09
A3 I Wish 2:29
A4 Listening To Slayer 4:02
A5 Hey Huge Man 1:19
A6 It Was O.K. 2:20
A7 Gruelling Task (Vocals – David Shrigley 1:43)
B1 Be Joyful 0:38
B2 I Rather Like You (Piano – Greg Saunders (2) 2:42)
B3 Dinosaur Egg 2:14
B4 Show Me 1:42
B5 Smash The Garden Gnomes 3:05
B6 Vandalism 3:09
B7 Malicious Invective 1:57
Edition of 100 black cassettes
David Shrigley and Lord Stornoway solidify their partnership on this glorious full length of rousing, wayward rock music that offers some large, loving arms to enwrap you in. Lord Stornoway - aka Glasgow-based musician Iain Shaw - has a long standing working partnership with Glasgow-associated artist David Shrigley, taking in a raft of smaller releases leading up to their sardonic and in parts pretty anthemic album Don't Worry. Lord Stornoway sets Shrigley lyrics to music, roping in the artist on occasion too.
The title song launches the album with a stirring rock n roll work out that feels muscular and almost like it should be in permanent residence at Hampden Park(it sounds like great stadium music, is the point.) It feels like a communal moment even, with a full band backing up some pretty colourful lyrics. It feels like a Robert Pollard song almost too catchy for Guided By Voices. No Vacancies accurately paints a typical Shrigley vignet, you feel like you're in a particularly sardonic illustration of his, with a decidedly BMX Bandits tilt. Shaw's vocal and guitar playing is economical and affecting, though with Shrigley's alternative universe to draw from the emotions come barbed and real at the same time. "I wish I was the empty egg of a tiny flightless bird..." they sing on I Wish. You can almost feel the confusion of your emotional receptors, there's a bucketload of humour that these small nuggets of sadness swim in.
Don't Worry can break out the heavy stuff too: Hey Huge Man has a full-tilt rock band dynamic, while the down at heel Gruelling Task plough through with a loping blues rock and drum machine musical backing to Shrigley's own monologue about being distinctly unhelpful. Ultimately though, it's the tension between Shrigley's lyrics- detached at times, cynical but strangely hopeful, almost like a forensic pulling apart of societal norms and psychological states of being - and Shaw's deft and sympathetic musical accompaniment that sometimes paints a contrasting background for them.
- Monorail Music