The Have Nots, Bad Pennies (Circus 65, 2003)
The Have Nots are a young duo from England, who make a hybrid sort of folk-pop, with influences ranging from country to emo-core. Bad Pennies is their first full-length release, following a handful of EPs, demos and limited releases.
Sophia Marshall and Liam Dullaghan are the core of the group, which also draws on the talents of a bassist, guitarist and drummer to round out the sound. Both sing in the kind of hushed, ethereal, affected way that currently seems to be popular among young neo-folkies. To be sure, their vocals, particularly their harmonies, are frequently beautiful; the stylings sometimes stand rather militantly between the singer and listener, though.
OK, I admit I may have been prejudiced a little bit by the booklet photograph of Dullaghan wearing an Abercrombie shirt. Maybe it's different in England, but in the U.S. at least, no self-respecting non-mainstream musician would be caught dead wearing a designer label, not even ironically.
There are some interesting songs here, but you're lucky if you can get to them without falling into a confused slumber, because four of the first five tracks are all slow, languid and rather amorphous songs. The opener, "Sin," features acoustic fingerpicked guitar and the duo's moaning, muttered vocals, which admittedly does build to an indie-rock pseudo-climax. "Hurricane" and "Shut Your Eyes" both are slow, stoner folk-pop influenced by the likes of the Be Good Tanyas and Gillian Welch, but without any of the inherent tension found in those artists' works, just the slow tempos.
The fourth track, "Sweetness & Light," actually has a beat, with Liam slurring his vocals over jangly guitars, and "Learning How to Whistle," though it returns to the same mid-tempo ghetto on the verses, gives up a rock-type beat on the chorus. "First and Last" does have a catchy melody and a hooky dulcimer-like guitar lick, but it's in the service of a pale Nick Drake imitation, a puppy-love song about the end of school. "Run for Colour" is a short and sweet calypso-beat song. "All the Wrong Wounds," another very short song, shows a Cowboy Junkies influence, with double acoustic guitars picking behind duet vocals. "Evergreen" is a dark minor-key kiss-off song in waltz time.
I was nonplussed at the juvenile tone of many of the songs, particularly "First and Last" and "k.i.s.s.i.n.g.," until I found out that the singers were nineteen and twenty-one when they cut this record. The Have Nots have potential -- they obviously know how to write songs, even though most of them aren't very interesting at this point in their careers. And they have lovely voices, though they could enunciate better. This duo bears watching.
The Have Nots have a Web site with news, photos and merchandise.
