Treasure is always good, but the treasure map sometimes has much to offer on its own. If you’re only a little bit familiar with the swirl of projects surrounding Cardiacs, then the unearthing of these four old songs will give you a nice warm glow. If, on the other hand, you’re better acquainted with that small galaxy of diverse Cardiacs-family projects (ranging from ambitious prog and rattling art-punk to chamber music and otherworldly folk experiments), then you’ll be fascinated by the way that this acts as a set of pointers, even a sort of missing link, to present directions.
But first, a bit of history. William D. Drake spent most of the 1980s playing vivacious, twirling keyboard parts for Cardiacs. In the process, he’d fleshed out the band’s threshing, confrontational complexities with threads of warm pastoralism, chamber-pop bloom and wry antiquarianism which utterly transformed their work. This was something which also extended to a couple of Drake-infused Cardiacs spin-offs: the eerie delights of The Sea Nymphs, simultaneously mediaeval, folky and child-like, and the hearty attention-deficit pop of The Grown-Ups. In 1991, however, Bill amicably quit the world of Cardiacs in search of something new. Most of this involved changing tack to play with roots-rockers Nervous, where he met clarinettist Bernie Holden, swapped synthesizers for rootsier keyboard tones, and got into jamming. But Nervous offered few opportunities for the growing sheaf of Drake compositions, nor for his interest in music beyond Band-like blends of country, blues and rock-and-roll. Even for a man as humble and avuncular as Bill Drake, something had to give. Something else really needed to pop up.
What did pop up – following a catch-up with London-bound Hullite Sharron Saddington – was Lake of Puppies: and it’s the key to a lot of what happened afterwards. Though still only in his early thirties, Bill was already a kindly and thoughtful veteran, deeply steeped in a musing personal stew of 1960s baroque pop, Renaissance music, punk, hymns, Edwardian parlour songs and the joys of old bookshops. A little younger, Sharron was also rawer: an unmeasured talent, and an earthy, roiling bass guitarist who also sang in a way that grafted the punk immediacy of The Raincoats or X-Ray Spex onto the Anglo-folk purity of a Lal Waterson. She didn’t know quite what she wanted yet, but was driven to find out. She and Bill formed the solid core of what was to come, squirreled away at the edge of east London, carving out a batch of harmony-rich songs of joy, perplexity and unusual perspectives away from anyone else.
When it came time to bring their work to light, Bernie Holden was an early Lake of Puppies recruit, adding clarinet tones to a chamber trio that never quite happened. Nerves about being strong enough for live performance then brought in ex-Quickspace/Milk drummer Chin Keeler and, most significantly, Craig Fortnam (the nimble-fingered classical/post-folk guitarist whom Bill had played with earlier in The Grown-Ups). Apparently, and in spite and his skills, Sharron was none too impressed with him and immediately determined that he’d never be in her band. She’d go on to work with him solidly for the next twenty-five years, and – as Sharron Fortnam – to marry him and take his name. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
Whatever the future chemistry, the mid-’90s chemistry was obvious. During the band’s short life, Lake of Puppies brought out the inherent warmth in everyone involved, buffed them to a glowing sheen and set them all on their proper courses. The four songs on this EP (captured by Cardiacs’ Tim Smith back in 1996) go some way towards explaining just how. In its English eccentricity, Lake of Puppies looks backwards to Cardiacs – or, more accurately, to the toots and rills of Drake’s work with The Sea Nymphs – but it also pulls its moods and musicality in from other sources. Bill’s beloved Renaissance music (with its lilts, continuos and buzzes), is always present in the background; but so are the open-hearted Canterbury prog songs of Ayers and Wyatt, the cracked syntax and tumbling tuneful perspectives of Syd Barrett, plus folk-waltzes, children’s chants and impromptu village-hall piano concerts. Also in the mix is that point of fuzzy contentment, where grandparent hangs out happily with grandchild (and where generational differences are quietly taken aside and told to take a hike). The mostly acoustic nature of the band (piano and harmonium instead of synths; reeds, wood, box-space and steel strings) add to the sense of comfort, with the occasional Smith-driven swell of electronic texture adding a little extra filigree to the ornate details. Bill and Sharron lead; Chin taps unobtrusively like a timepiece in another room; Craig and Bernie humbly restrain themselves to weaving soft counterpoint and heightened arrangement.
The rolling, cascading round of Si C’est Fidelite shows, from the off, that Lake of Puppies were entirely unconcerned by notions of old or new. A waltzing Drake setting of a sixteenth-century French love sonnet by Pontus de Tyard, it’s not a million miles away from Carol of the Bells. It could have been precious, or prissy, but it’s delivered with the enthusiasm of a tipsy Christmas singalong, one where the wine hasn’t yet taken the edge off the skills. It ripples through the room, a set of helium-filled chimes bumping gently at the ceiling, Sharron’s au naturel kitchen soprano and Bill’s loving, creaking baritone run up and down the canon. There’s a nod back to Bill’s Marvell, Longfellow and mediaeval poem settings with Sea Nymphs, but there’s also a relaxed post-Smith expansiveness that wasn’t there before.
The little slice of folk opera that’s The Donkey Song has long been a lost legend amongst Drake fans, and it makes a triumphant return. A sorry-sweet Rabelaisian tale (initially ducking and diving as if trying to tell its story while dodging the chuck-out hook coming in from stage left – at one point, you can hear Bill scrabbling at the pages of his score), it covers a tender whiskery-nosed love affair between a young woman and a donkey, an unexpected death and a tune played on the testicles, but still manages to feel wholesome. That’s partly due to that glorious laddering coda of piano and home-made choir, sitting in subtly increasing layers of reverb and tugging the song upwards, like a fleet of scudding hot-air balloons (balloons, again) in a spring sky.
It’s in these two songs that you see the blueprint for Bill’s later solo career. The poems, the fables, the rippling piano; the balmy atmospheres and soft humour; the billowing chamber arrangements, the push-and-pull of cosiness and challenge. Here’s where it came into focus.
Likewise, My Shoulder Ride is an earlier flowering of the Fortnam & Fortnam songwriting alliance. Craig and Sharron would carry it off wholesale (and with extra strum) to their next project, The Shrubbies; and it also pre-echoes the folkier moments of their later work as North Sea Radio Orchestra. Here, in its original appearance, it’s got a little more churchy echo, a bit more of a baroque chamber sparkle. Craig’s intricate guitar part steps up to drive the song with concert-hall elan, while beneath her forthright vocal Sharron’s lyric probes with delicate, gawky uncertainty at the apprehension of intimacy and common purpose. “To be under the weight of you / and feel more as if a cloud was within me… / Ends meet where Earth and air divide, weight of the world my shoulder ride / and there withheld a love untried / if you are not to be. / Of ancient things there is a call to come / part of us, part of all, / to grow in strength, to shrink so small / if you are not to be.” In its explorations, its attempts to reach through the human muddle and connect smallness to greatness, it directly anticipates her present-day work with Kugelschreiber. In previous hindsight, it would have seemed more like a promise of further Fortnamisation; an unintended ticket out of Lake of Puppies once the band had come to a premature end.
Before thinking about that, though, there’s Large Life, which ties everything up musically and emotionally with a big wide bow. A wonky waltz which at times barely seems to be hanging together – the instruments bumping into each other like loose flotsam – it suddenly explodes, mid-song, into a celebratory full-band chorale, leaving you lightened in the heart. Sharron’s elusive, flitting lyric tilts at thoughts of fame and humility, of scale and of achieving what you can and what’s best for you. She sings it with a winning, nothing-up-the-sleeve openness. The band have never sounded stronger, happier, more illuminated by good humour, as if they’ve burst merrily into their own home.
That was that – an end on a high. After only about a year of full-band life, the Puppies quietly dissolved, although no doors were closed and no paths left uncrossed. Bill and Bernie would continue with Nervous for a while (and would still collaborate when Bill finally struck out on his own in 2001), Chin went on with noisy psych-folkers Dark Captain, and the Fortnams still had two-and-a-half more decades of close and varied work together to come. Here, though, and this fistful of songs was where a set of futures were clearly mapped, craft brought fully to bear on practise, and courses set. It’s delightful to be able to hear it in its own full clear glory.
Neither thirty years of waiting, nor the potential disappointment of whispers, lost-song hype and rumours, have dimmed it in the slightest. It bounds up to you as if your own arrival is the happiest event of its life.
TRACK LISTING
01. Si C’est Fidelite (4:24)
02. The Donkey Song (6:34)
03. My Shoulder Ride (3:01)
04. Large Life (3:28)
Total Time – 17:27
MUSICIANS
William D. Drake – Piano, Harmonium, Keyboards, Vocals
Sharron Fortnam – Bass Guitar, Vocals
Craig Fortnam – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Bernie Holden – Clarinet
Chin Keeler – Drums, Percussion
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Wamho Records
Country of Origin: U.K.
Date of Release: 6th December 2024
LINKS
Lake Of Puppies – Bandcamp
William D. Drake – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | X
Sharron Fortnam – Bandcamp (Kugelschreiber) | Bandcamp (The Shrubbies) | X | Patreon
Craig Fortnam – Facebook | Bandcamp | X
Chin Keeler – Website
