David Fee and Les Oman, stalwarts of the Kintyre music and songwriting scene, met, quite by chance, at the auto teller in Longrow South, Campbeltown on a cold day in January 2017. It happened to be the day after the inauguration of the 45th POTUS. Walking up the road together they were both bemused, confused and concerned about “The State of Things”. A mere four or five hours later, in an exchange of texts, the first song on the album, “Ranches and Mansions”, started coming together. Over the next few weeks, the songs came thick and fast. Along the way, a couple of old fragments were re-purposed to suit the current theme, but most of the songs were fresh-minted during a five-week period. And so, quite unexpectedly, The Strunts and Too Much of Everything were born.

Les and David describe The Strunts’ style as “Post-truth, New Wave Folk”. Certainly, the songs on the album invoke a wide range of emotions including anger, regret, compassion and surprise. However, if you dig deep enough you will find that those songs are also infused with a rich seam of dark humour. Recorded over the last 3 years, with the help of musician and engineer/producer Sam Hales at his studio in Campbeltown, the music style that emerged has an acoustic and folky vibe, based around the “boys’” guitar and bouzouki input, but with various other flavours and genres thrown into the mix in a haphazard but strangely pleasing manner. Local friends and musicians added to and enhanced the evolving groove. These included Alison Leith on vocals (making Alien in Slovenia her own), Anne Leith on backing vocals, Mark Leishman on drums and percussion and Alex Johnson on double bass and moothie. Everything else was handled by Sam Hales, who in addition to engineering the album, also played electric guitar, bass and anything else that is not credited in the sleeve-notes. Despite being delighted with the result, The Strunts will be equally delighted if POTUS 46 is somebody else, meaning that the “difficult second album” can fly in some other weird and wonderful direction.

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