The Look of Gothic Alt-Folk on Still Life, the Oli Spleen Album Fronted by a Plastic-Filled Albatross
The Look of Gothic Alt-Folk on Still Life, the Oli Spleen Album Fronted by a Plastic-Filled Albatross
Piano, Accordion, Clarinet and Seagull Field Recordings Frame a British Concept Album About Loss
The cover shows a dead albatross in green leaves and pink flowers, its body packed with plastic. Oli Spleen released Still Life, the gothic alt-folk album behind it, on 1 April 2022. The image sets the subject straight away: grief, mortality and what people do to the natural world.
Oli Spleen’s Still Life title track now sits on our folk pop playlist, and the coverage so far is gathered on Oli Spleen’s artist profile. The album came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Press play, then read on for how the record was built.
Oli Spleen Built Still Life Around the Albatross on Its Cover
Oli Spleen is a singer and songwriter from Brighton, United Kingdom. His first band, The Flesh Happening, started in 2003. He has worked solo since 2012, and Still Life is his fifth album.
The cover is a painting by Sara Abbott. Abbott made it from a photograph by Claire Fackler of NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries, and Steve Johnson did the layout. It is a striking piece of presentation. Before a note plays, it tells you this is a concept album.
The songs move from personal grief and the fear of dying to the state of the planet. Climate change, disappearing species and the balance of nature all feature. The title track then turns the album’s name into a promise: There is still life in me yet.
Fans also helped to pay for it. A crowdfunding page offered a CD and a lyric book for £10.
On Still Life, Oli Spleen Surrounds the Songs With Piano, Accordion, Clarinet and Strings
On the closing song, Oli Spleen, also known as Oliver Speer, wrote the words and, with Mishkin Fitzgerald, the music. Fitzgerald also arranged it. The core band is small. He sings, and Fitzgerald plays piano and adds backing vocals. Garry Mitchell plays guitar and bass, and Anna Mylee is on drums.
Fitzgerald is best known as the singer and pianist of Birdeatsbaby. Fitzgerald and Mitchell founded that band after meeting at university. The background fits a record where the piano sits under most of the songs.
The palette widens from song to song. On Refugee, Merlin Shepherd plays clarinet and Tristram Arnold takes the piano. Fitzgerald moves to accordion, and Polina Shepherd adds vocals and lyrics in Russian.
Meanwhile, Out of The Dirt, the opening track, and Albatross add strings played by Hana Maria. As a result, the album moves between a cabaret piano room and something closer to chamber folk.
Still Life Was Made at The Nest Studios, With Binaural Seagulls on Thundercloud
Garry and Mishkin, as the sleeve calls them, recorded and produced the album at The Nest Studios in Brighton. Robert Macciochi mastered it at Subvert Central Mastering.
The most unusual detail sits on Thundercloud. Steve Johnson made binaural seagull recordings for it, so the sea is in the mix as well as on the cover.
Thundercloud is also the oldest idea on the album. It was first conceived in 2009 with Pink Narcissus, an earlier group of Oli Spleen’s. It took 13 years to reach a finished recording.
The record has clear relatives. In 1989, Marc Almond released Jacques, an album of Jacques Brel songs. He also recorded dark French chansons and set poems by Rimbaud and Baudelaire to music. Still Life draws on the same theatre of piano and voice.
Then there is Anohni, whose 4 Degrees came out in November 2015, timed to the Paris climate conference. The song deals with a hotter planet and the wildlife it loses. The albatross on this cover carries the same grief.
AltPop.News’s curator team: “Very few albums commit to an image as completely as Still Life does. The plastic in that albatross, the seagulls on Thundercloud and the accordion on Refugee all point the same way. That is what makes the record feel built rather than assembled.”
Where to Hear Still Life by Oli Spleen, From Bandcamp to a CD With a Hidden Bonus Track
Still Life runs to ten songs and about 43 minutes, from Out of The Dirt to the closing song. The CD edition adds a hidden bonus track, How Wild the Wind Blows.
It suits listeners who like dark cabaret and gothic folk. It also suits anyone who wants songs about the environment without a lecture. For newcomers in the United Kingdom or beyond, it is a good way into Oli Spleen’s catalogue.
Start with the album trailer in the middle of this page. After that, play the record in order, since the concept depends on it.
Still Life is on Bandcamp and Apple Music, and the CD sits in the Bandcamp merch store. Follow Oli Spleen across platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X.
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