On Getting More Than You Expected

Admittedly most of this excess of Smoke Fairies freebies consists of postcards but it is always nice to get stuff like this. I am a wibbling fool for limited edition CDs/7" Singles/Picture Disks/Sumptuous booklets but purchase of these has been reduced in proportion to my trips to Probe Records and other such byways of alternative music. Stop Press - I see from this link that Probe have just moved to The Bluecoat which is excellent news. My first trips to Probe were when it was at its second location right in the centre of Liverpool - it was the standard alternative record store - vinyl on the walls - sticky carpets - exotic aromas and everything else. It was sad when it moved from there to an anonymous looking boxy building well out of the centre. Marriage and Children mean I rarely go except to pick up my free copy of The Stool Pigeon. The last things I bought there were a second-hand copy of Surfer Rosa and by coincidence a double-A side 7 inch of Gastown and River Song  by The Smoke Fairies (produced by Jack White). I will be at The Bluecoat as soon as possible. Well back to the Freebies. This is The Smoke Fairies first album proper - Through Low Light and Trees, a beautiful collection of modern folk from two smooth-voiced women from Chichester (rather than some prairie train halt as suggested by some of the music and some of the titles). They harmonise at a weirdly low-level which is so beautiful that it is difficult to say how much so. This album deserves a proper review but the several times I have listened to it so far have been in the car ... with children ... and so have not been entirely uninterrupted. For anyone desperately interested there is what I thought was an album called Strange the Things which must be a collection of singles.