EP Review: Blake English – Spiders Make Great Poets

Very occasionally a piece of work drops that is almost flawless in its design and execution and I have no hesitation in offering the opinion right off the bat that Spiders Make Great Poets by Blake English is one of those works. Maybe that’s raising expectations to unrealistic levels and at the surface, there’s nothing particularly ground-breaking or earth-shattering about these five tracks of power-pop. Quite the opposite, in fact. It immediately sounds familiar and comfortable. The devil, however, is in the detail. This is a piece of work you have to listen to and not just hear. You will not get the full effect if you don’t.

When you do, what you get is five servings of deeply personal and quite intimate self-exploration set to a background of peerless guitar pop that makes it sound exactly like the kind of disposable music it mimics. But it most certainly isn’t. There’s an almost Brechtian lyrical vibe to these mini street operas that makes the EP feel like soundbites from a much larger piece of great pop theatre. Dysfunction and turmoil abounds yet there’s a tangibly optimistic thread running through the five songs. These are all great songs. None more so than The Neighbors, which paints a bleak and depressing picture of the classic broken family from the South and is, in its 5:29 minutes, as damning an indictment of the American Way as you’ll find anywhere. A musical storybook with vivid colours and deep, dark shadows.

Even if you didn’t have the time or inclination to give this EP the time it needs to settle properly in your psyche, it’s a great listen. It sounds fantastic – at times a jaunty version of My Chemical Romance, sometimes more like the bleak cabaret of the Tiger Lillies, with keyboard interludes. And everywhere in-between. But mostly sublime guitar pop. Blake English is Jim Steinman of power-pop. You heard that here first.

Spiders Make Great Poets can be streamed via digital service providers here.