Biography

Glasgow's Trembling Bells mix eclectic influences like country, classic rock, metal and Latin music into their British folk foundations just as skillfully as they collaborate with artists including Kaleidoscope, the Incredible String Band and Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Drummer Alex Neilson, an improviser who has played with Jandek and Current 93 among others, formed the band in 2008 to explore more structured, song-based music. To fill out the lineup, recruited vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Lavinia Blackwall (who worked with Neilson in the group Directing Hand), bassist/vocalist Simon Shaw (also of Lucky Luke), and guitarist/harmonica player Ben Reynolds (who played with Neilson in Motor Ghost and is also a solo artist).This version of the group released its debut album, Carbeth, in April 2009 on Honest Jon's Records. Blackwall's clear soprano and the group’s acoustic leanings drew acclaim and comparisons to Pentangle, Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band, and other British folk luminaries of the '60s and '70s -- so much so that the band participated in an Incredible String Band tribute concert at London’s Barbican a couple of months after Carbeth's release. For 2010's Abandoned Love, they co-produced the album with Belle & Sebastian's Stevie Jackson, added guitarist/vocalist Mike Hastings to the fold and incorporated medieval, country, and classic rock influences into their sound. They remained prolific and stylistically restless in 2011, releasing the more psychedelic The Constant Pageant and Marble Downs, a set of duets between Blackwall and Will Oldham that arrived in April 2012. Following a 2013 side project called the Crying Lion that saw both Neilson and Blackwall collaborating with the a cappella group Muldoon's Picnic on a set of choral tunes, Trembling Bells returned with their fifth album, 2015's The Sovereign Self. Their colorful explorations of British folk and psych styles continued a year later with Wide Majestic Aire, an eight-song mini-album intended as a sort of companion piece to The Sovereign Self. October 2016 saw the release of The Bonnie Bells of Oxford, a live EP recorded on tour with Bonnie "Prince" Billy. On 2018's full-length Dungeness, Trembling Bells continued to expand their horizons by incorporating elements of stoner rock, Latin and Middle Eastern music into the proceedings. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi