Steve Hoskins’ Bedlamtide is a newfangled collection of musical mirth and musings ready and eager for your listening consumption. You’ll dip in slowly, tasting the songs tentatively at first, then chew them thoughtfully, and finally glut yourself on the most wonderful jumble of cacophonous and lovely sounds that you’ve never heard from around these parts. You’re as likely to find an off-tune accordion, a pvc flute or a radiator in any of these songs as a guitar or proper drum kit, and the resulting sound is as unexpected and strangely delightful as the tools themselves. The music Steve makes, while so immersed he forgets to eat for days at a time, is a product of what he is all about—laugh-havin, because life is too short not to have a salty old laughin good time. There’s something in the music that’s an echo of the place he loves and calls home; Newfoundland, and its robust species of a people that know how to laugh and live real like no one anywhere else in the world. It’s music that will provoke a stagger and shout, a sway and a stomp, and perhaps a long, loud holler into the night.