Music Arcades: The Eighteenth Day of May: The Eighteenth Day of May

I got this almost exactly four years ago, 25 January 2006. At that time The Eighteenth Day of May were the great white hope of whatever folk-rock revival was under way at the time. Andy Kershaw threw himself behind them with all the Rochdale gusto he could muster, saying he hadn't been excited by a folk-rock combo with a female singer and a dulcimer since early 10,000 Maniacs.

When Andy started raving about 18thDoM on the radio, I was pleased to find I already had a ticket to see them play, as they were supporting Robyn Hitchcock and the Minus 3 (or Venus 5, or something) at The Scala. He broadcast both bands on his show, and I expect I have recordings of them amongst my hundred or so unmarked mini-discs.

I enjoyed 18thDoM that evening, so at the end of the gig I made my way to the merchandise stall. Idly browsing the products laid out on the trestle table, I was aware of someone behind the stall with an unusually friendly and outgoing attitude — as "can I help you at all?" I looked up to find it was Peter Buck smiling at me. Yep, that Peter Buck. I felt it would be an unjust reciprocation of his good humour to ask for the album by the support band instead of the one he played on, so I did a London mumble about "just browsing" and waited from him to direct his bonhomie elsewhere before getting this CD from some non-millionaire non-rock-star who looked as miserably misanthropic as me.

We saw 18thDoM again, seven months later at the Green Man Festival. Momentum was building. Then, suddenly, it was all over: an announcement on their MySpace that the band had split, just a year after I got the CD. For a while I kept bumping into members of the band at gigs (though I never spoke to them, of course), and fragments of the band also appear, to this day, in The Left Outsides and The See See — both of whom have supported The Clientele in the last year or so. But none of these offshoots have that great white hope aura around them. There's honour, and sometimes beauty, but no glory, in supporting The Clientele.

I like the album more now than I did four years ago. Back then I liked them, but still felt suspicious that Kershaw was going overboard on the basis of scant evidence of greatness. I still don't think it's a truly great album, but it has a timeless appeal, and timelessness always feels better with age.