​​The Star Chamber - Misery for the Masses

The Star Chamber consists mostly of The Knocking Shop’s Seamus Duggan, on spoken word, his other half Nora Gannon, of the all-female Crimestar, on vocals, and Knocking Shop’s guitarist Dave Connolly on six string duties. While initiated as something of a pandemic lockdown inspired side project, as the conspiracy theory track ‘Quarantine’ would suggest, the ensemble possesses enough of a distinctive ethos to differentiate it from the boys’ other vehicle. As the veridical title might indicate, mortality, memory and melancholy suffuse the seven songs on this debut mini-album. However this is not defeatism, but resistance. Lead single ‘Epitaphs’ abounds in pop culture references, while other titles like ‘Train’ deal with aspects of life under what is optimistically termed ‘late capitalism’.

Seamus once described himself as ‘a sort of punk Leonard Cohen’. You might also think of his emphatic sprechgesang delivery as Mark E. Smith in a Bray rather than Mancunian accent. Contrasted with and complemented by Nora’s more recognisably conventional but sometimes soaring singing, and underpinned by Dave’s inventive, flamingo-like fretboard textures, a satisfyingly original whole is achieved. Recorded and produced by Trouble Pilgrims Pete Holidai at his Pilgrim Sound Studio, this is an exciting first venture which augurs well for the future. Full disclosure, lest I be accused of favoritism somewhere down the line: Seamus and Nora are good friends of mine. But there is a reason for that, for which this recording provides ample evidence.