EP Review: Four Candles – Alternative Golf

Manchester, UK’s Four Candles are set to release their forthcoming four track EP “Alternative Golf” on Friday 5th June via German Shepherd Records, all profits from the sale of “Alternative Golf” will go to the Crowdfunder to save Manchester’s much loved grass roots venue The Peer Hat that, like grassroots venues across the world, needs our help to survive during this current pandemic and lockdown. If you buy the “Alternative Golf” EP for £3 or more on release day the venue will gain maximum benefit from your purchase as the EP’s release coincides with the next upcoming fee free Bandcamp Friday.

The four tracks contained on the “Alternative Golf” EP are all staples from Four Candles live set, or least they were until March when everything came to a grinding halt. The EP’s lead single ‘Doughnuts‘ is a dark unsettling and, by Four Candles standards, a fairly restrained affair, ‘Loose Lips‘ ups the pace but doesn’t sacrifice any of the band’s idiosyncratic tendencies. But it’s from ‘Basketcase‘ onwards the band truly let loose and head down the rabbit hole before the final track, ‘Requiem‘, unleashes justifiable rage at the indifference of the powers that be to the suffering and death of the most vulnerable in society. The best post punk bands push things to the edge, something that inevitably means that not everything they release will please even there most die hard fans, Four Candles are never going to release a crowd pleaser, and the “Alternative Golf” EP is no exception as it’s an experimental, unpredictable and distinctly left field affair.

“Alternative Golf” is augmented by the inclusion of piano, cello, flute, bassoon and trumpet and was recorded and engineered by the band’s regular partner in crime Simon “Ding” Archer (The Fall, Pixies, Bobbie Peru, PJ Harvey) at Salford’s 6db Studios. Four Candles are not a band concerned with singles or commercial viability, this is a band that have always done things on their own terms with a sound that draws from everything from punk and post punk to art rock and garage rock, all of which is delivered at punishing volume with a surprisingly poetic turn to the lyrics. Four Candles aren’t going to change to please anyone but themselves and we wouldn’t have them any other way.

“Alternative Golf” will be available via the German Shepherd Records‘ Bandcamp from the 5th June