Untitled Document

NME-2/12/2000: Lincoln's tense, brooding pace hints of Nick Cave at his most lugubrious, yet occasional lifting brass interludes suggest a 19th-century New Orleans bordello on a summers night. Singer Alex Gordon, guitarist David Hannam, and bassist Jim Friedlander all play trumpet, clarinet and trombone respectively, so they don't even need to import any extra bodies. They do however bring in Bettie Page lookalike Tracey Van Daal, who's dulcet tones grace the extremely lovely mini-album title track. APRIL LONG

NME-13/1/2001: It's a testament to the rare emotive power of Lincoln's music that someone alomost gets beaten up for talking during 'Bullet Proof'. Fair enough: Lincoln deserve undivided attentions they gently weave their mournful blues-rock. In Alex Gordon, this sextet has a multi-talented frontman - his angelic vocals inter weaving with the soulful croon of Tracy Van Daal, a worthy successor to Portishead's Beth Gibbons, while guitarist Dave Hannam adds a dose of space-rock weirdness to the forlorn 'Barcelona' and 'Johnny Morris'. NIALL O'KEEFE

NME-20/1/2001 (letters page): Niall O'Keefe (NME, January 13), you are a clown. I had the displeasure of witnessing the piss-curdlingly mawkish Lincoln at 93 Feet East - they made The Beautiful South sound like sonic art terrorists. Less rock than an Alan Titchmarsh garden party and drippier than a Ginsters pasty in the bath, their twattish namby-pambyism is redolent of an anemic Deacon Blue grown flabby on Gloria Hunniford's reconstituted breast milk. The tedium of 'Bullet Proof' was momentarily relieved when I was presented with the opportunity to assault some c___ muttering about the "rare emotive power" of Jimmy Nail. THE DIABOLICAL KIM RUBICON

NME - 17/2/01: It's no wonder Lincoln leave no clues about their origins. They're named after a confederate patriarch in an obscure Jim Thompson novel and their stated aim is to recreate a country-drenched Deep South soundscape. Which is quite a task when your from Stoke Newington. Thank the lord, then - and hold the ammunition - that this debut mini-LP transcends physical location and encompasses a variety of moods: frustration world-weariness and, surprise, melancholy.The main device that places Lincoln miles from mundane indie fumblings, though, is restrained guitar noise, not to mention a reliance on horns that could've come straight out of a New Orleans funeral march, by the way of the late jazz arranger, Gil Evans. Whether the listener is immersed in the aggressive 'Snake Heads', ensnared within the sweet and low title track, or tickled by the way 'Bullet Proof' condenses paranoid urban angst into an understated and summery instrumental patchwork, clichés are conspicuous by their absence. If there's an Achilles heel here, it's in the form of sometimes numbing introspection, and the way the outside world is ignored in favor of intimate dissections of relationships. But then, who knows what fresh hell would be unleashed, should Lincoln wear politics on their sleeves. DELE FADELE