Songdog

Background

Band members include Lyndon Morgans (vocals, acoustic guitar and songs), Karl Woodward (electric guitars, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, keyboards), Dave Paterson (drums, keyboards, accordion, percussion), and Jasper Salmon (violin).

Lyndon Morgans has also been a playwright. He wrote a play entitled Water Music which won the Verity Bargate award in 1991 and was performed at London's Cockpit Theatre in 1992 and starred David Ryall (Outnumbered, The Singing Detective), Dervla Kirwan (Ballykissangel, Goodnight Sweetheart), Linda Baron (Open All Hours) and Elizabeth Estensen (The Liver Birds).

The band’s debut album, The Way of the World, was self-released. Nevertheless, it received some positive press, including a four (out of five) star review from Martin Aston of The Times in June 2001. Morgans "is smitten by that old salty Belgian dog Jacques Brel, as shown by the sparse, candlelit arrangements and tremulous vocals".

In 2003 the band’s second album, Haiku, was released on Evangeline Records. The album received a four (out of five) star review in Uncut. "If 2001's superb 'The Way of the World' was a fittingly damaged, literary affair for a songwriter in thrall to the Beats, Brel and Dylan, 'Haiku' ups the ante with more extreme, nerve-jarring tales of love and sex in all its obsessive, voyeuristic, clammy glory".

By the time of the third album in 2006 the band had signed to One Little Indian Records. Again the album received some positive press, including a 4.5 out of 5 star review in The Sun newspaper. "There's a raw honesty to Morgans' acute insights set in sparse, intimate musical surroundings... The Time of Summer Lightning is one of those albums you can get lost in for weeks. Another example of why quiet might just be the new loud".

2008’s A Wretched Sinner's Song was a double album released to mixed reviews. The NME wrote that Lyndon Morgans’ "storytelling hints at a real gravity".

On A Life Eroding, the band’s fifth album, "Lyndon Morgans’ lyrics are as evocative as ever, but his graphic, oddly magical songs haven’t previously enjoyed such well-plotted arrangements". Mojo awarded the album four (out of five) stars.

Sixth album "Last Orders At Harry's Bar" was released in 2013 and was awarded 8/10 by Uncut's Nigel Williamson, who called it "..a set of darkly melancholic songs reflecting on a life of lust, pain, reckless hedonism, betrayal, lost opportunities and "good times... pissed away"." Nick Toczek, R2 Magazine awarded the album 5 stars, and Gavin Martin in the Mirror awarded the album 4 (out of 5) stars, as did Jeremy Searle in Maverick. Track 'St Lucy's Day' also featured on an Uncut covermount CD.

Songdog's most recent release, in 2016, was a download-only single called "It's Not A Love Thing", which was produced by Nigel Stonier. The track received plays on both BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music. Songdog's next album, "Joy Street" is due in 2017.

Celebrity fans include Bruce Springsteen, who used Songdog's "Days of Armageddon" (from 2003 album Haiku) for "walk in music" on his European tour and personally requested a copy of their third album, The Time of Summer Lightning. Haiku, the title for Songdog's second album, means a Japanese verse of three short, unrhymed lines. Tracks from the third album received radio airplay on Jonathan Ross' BBC Radio 2 show and John Kennedy's XFM show, amongst others.

Songdog have performed at the Bloomsbury Theatre, St Pancras Old Church, Kings Place and O2 Indigo, and supported Martin Rossiter, Joan As Policewoman, Ed Harcourt, The Handsome Family and The Go-Betweens, Australian indie rockers.

it is as a live act that Songdog come in to their own, in tune with each other and the audience they at once conjure up the seedy back rooms of Weimar Berlin or Montmartre and smoke filled pubs in Glasgow, London or Cardiff, the perverse beauty of their tales will have you leaning forwards on the edge of your seat.

Key songs

Quotes from Lyndon Morgans

Albums