SixToes

Here's the album you want to get this week. They're a London based six-piece - one of whom has polydactism, a sixth to - and they recorded their debut in three suitably weird location: the grounds of an asylum: in the old warder's quarters of Holloway Prison: and in a London squat. It exudes the brooding, biblical, murder ballad gloom of Nick Cave and sounds rather like Antony and the johnsons singing the music of Nick Drake in the style of Anesiac-era Radiohead fused with that of a Romanian gypsy band. Highly recommended. - The Sunday Telegraph

Something stirs in the undergrowth - the haunted, rustic-gone-urban sound of these vagabond pilgrims. Ben Rogers and David Greenep began collaborating when they lived in a car in Cornwall. SixToes' cranky classical folk - flavoured with wind chimes, wine glasses and wheezing cello - is hard to categorise. The tender but spooky vocals recall Antony and the Johnsons. - Daily Mirror

SixToes' debut album is a collection of oddball yet moving songs. Neo-classical guitars mix with soaring vocals to create something both spooky and comforting. As playful as Andrew Bird but with the eccentricities of Tom Waits and the elegance of Shearwater. Marvellous. - Music Week

Named after one of the band memebers who apparently has an extra toe on each foot, SixToes appear from the darkness to quietly hex with darlk lullabies. Formed by the duo of David Greenep and Ben Rogers, they began writing together while living together in a car in cornwall (what happened to the cafeteria at art school?). Soon expanded to a full band and based in London, the band has toured with Jamie T and the Mystery Jets and spent dark evenings in spooky locations recoroding 'Trick Of The Night'. Their dark tales align the band more with Tom Waits rather the The Horrors and an enchanting window into a dark, moonlight folk tradition. - Clash

This London sextet divided the recording od their debut album between a cottage on the grounds of an old asylum in cambridgshire, the old warder's quarters at Holloway prison and a run down squat in London. Perhaps unsurprisingly the result has a sinister quality. Vocalist Ben Rogers's voice leaps between a Nick cave style growl and an eerie falsetto that recalls Antony Hegarty, while Anne Carruthers's strings on Same Again and Four Leaved Clover come draped in cobwebs. Crucially, the band's talent for bitter sweet melodies, for example the doleful violins on Curse Go Back! stop the gothic atmosphere tipping into melodrama. - Q