The Bonfire Band
One Man Can't Carry Half a Piano
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Acoustic five-piece take their music out of North London's pubs via this self-released debut. Easy-flowing harmonies and melodies swim along like early Jayhawks, the lyrics smiling in the face of life and love's travails.

Andy Fyfe, Q Magazine, Nov '09

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The Bonfire Band
****
One Man Can't Carry Half a Piano

Building their profile through steady gigging on the London acoustic and open-mic circuit, Hackney's Bonfire Band are one of those rare acts that, rather than seek fame and fortune by any means necessary, are content to achieve simply on the back of good songs and hard work.

Formed around the duo of Ben Faulkner on guitar and harmonica and Will Heath on acoustic five-string bass, the gentle harmony-led songs call to mind early Simon & Garfunkel and even The Everly Brothers. And while Faulkner's superb harp playing conjures images of freight train-hopping Americana, the unadorned, strictly English-and-so-what vocal delivery sets them apart from the crowd and only adds to their charm - as it did with The Go-betweens thirty years earlier.

Never breaking into a sweat, other than on the drily witty 'Minus Twenty Grand' perhaps, these eleven sweet songs come together to make an all-too-brief album that it's impossible to dislike.

- Gerry Ranson, Rock n Reel, Sept/Oct '09