False Lights

False Lights

False Lights are a British folk rock group featuring Jim Moray and Sam Carter. The band grows out of a shared interest in folk music and heavy guitar music, and its sound is described as loud, electric and guitar-led, with a connection to Radiohead rather than to more traditional folk revival acts. It combines folk material with rock arrangements and a broad instrumental approach.

Repertoire and style

The group’s False Lights EP includes four tracks that draw on older songs and texts. Skewball is a song first recorded by A. L. Lloyd in the early 1960s and later by Steeleye Span and Martin Carthy in the early 1970s. Polly On The Shore is collected from George “Pop” Maynard in West Hoathly, Sussex in the 1950s, and in False Lights’ version it becomes an alt-rock style anthem with strings, ebow guitars and Sam Carter’s vocal. The Maid Of Australia is closely associated with Norfolk through Harry Cox and Walter Pardon, and also through Peter Bellamy’s 1979 recording, which made it familiar to a folk revival audience. Crossing The Bar sets one of the last poems written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson to music previously created by American old-time fiddler Rani Arbo; False Lights present it with church-music influences, large-scale guitars, swooping fiddles and Brazilian rhythms.