Don’t Call Me Ishmael are a band from Staffordshire who have morphed, over the course of three albums, into purveyors of rambunctious pop and heart-on-the sleeve romanticism.
With a wide-eyed commitment to making their point, intertwined with a fine ear for melody, they tread the line between Frank Turner’s hard hitting agit-pop and The Decemberists’ storytelling folk sensibilities.
A six-piece outfit containing two sets of siblings, Don’t Call Me Ishmael have an intuitive feel that such familial ties bring. As you would expect with a band that contains five vocalists, they produce razor-sharp harmonies and truth-soaked lyrics straight out of the Loudon Wainwright or Billy Bragg songbook.
Their third album; ‘Saint Ishmael’ was released in February 2019 digitally, and on vinyl, on Droma Records. Containing their 2018 single; ‘Blood is thicker’, the album veers between the gently life-affirming ballad ‘Until you can’t run anymore’ and the self-destructive garage rock ‘Schism’.
