Two Steps At A Time is the debut album by the Indie super group Railcard who are Rachel Love, Ian Button and Peter Momtchiloff with Allison Thomson who formed this band because they were all born in 1962. The album features additional guitar from David Lovell and was Produced by Railcard and mixed by Allen Crockford.
The album opens with the title track Two Steps At A Time they bound up those stairs and through the cemetery, in time to hear the whistling man trying to lure them into a different world, that might give you a heart attack over the slow indie pop backing.
1962 Forever is the year of the band members birth and why they formed a band together, this has a wistful late 60's or early 70's pop feel, almost New Seekers or Mary Hopkins in style, while hoping to avoid the cliches, this is infectious laid-back pop wonderment.
Hillman Minx is in praise of those magical cars, I wonder if they had one with a crank handle, for those cold mornings, while they suck their spangles and drink Tizer in the back seat, this makes me remember having to push dad's one down a hill to get it started a few times, his trying to teach mum to drive in it all around Dorset, in the very early 70's.
Flannelette is a material they are in love with, the magic of the artificiality that seemed to signal the future back in the early 70's, crisp brass backing and vocals make this very evocative. Foxy is just one of the songs this year about Foxes, it seems to be a real current trend, this one is cool chamber pop for a fox that comes up to there windows and looks in, while they're neighbours want the Fox gone, I sympathise as Bruce our front garden fox is equally loved and hated by the various people living in this block of flats, possibly if he wasn't so loud at night, we could all accept Foxy's right to live peacefully in our gardens.
I'm A Disaster well not really, you can't have played in all those bands and be the nightmare you claim to be, unless you are always skipping town going on tour again, while seeming to almost want to be the Kinks again. Paper Thin are the walls between you and the distance it takes to change your world into one of refinement and sweet intentions, so you are the same on the outside as you are on the inside.
Unstable Neighbour has treated trumpet and a gloriously insistent riff, explaining just how unstable your neighbour really is, along with all the ways you've upset them, no matter what you do, we all have an Unstable Neighbour this song could be about. If you have any good legal tricks for dealing with them, please let me know. Anything to stop the passive aggressive notes, emails and ranting phone calls.
Runaround isn't the theme tune to the TV show we all watched as kids, sadly, but the close trumpets do hint at the mayhem inherent in that show, while they sing of a relationship in distress, your lover is giving you the Runaround once more.
When You Say You Love Me Somethings Wrong is for one of those boyfriends, who can make you believe anything, yet when you say you love her she never believes you, the lyrics are wry yet totally believable in this gentle hazy world Railcard have created.
Snow Blind is what you are, you can't see the forest for the trees and are full of dark regrets, in this wonderfully gentle world they create, somehow though, no matter all the beauty, they still find turbulence in their quest for love and contentment.
The album closes with the latest song called Sunday Sun this is hazy sun-drenched reflections, hoping to give each other the time they need to be ready to embrace and love the day away dreaming of the day when a Lyndsey De Paul revival is in full swing and songs like this are in the charts again.
Find out more at https://railcardband.bandcamp.com/album/two-steps-at-a-time https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61581360698332
