10/07/2026
Due to a happy confluence of events involving a redundancy payment, a subsequent tax rebate and the fee from a weekend’s stage managing at Maverick, I’ve been able to become a record company A&R man, record producer and featured performer all in one go. I did get someone else to write the press release, mind…
One of the first questions most people ask when you mention that you are in a band is, “What sort of music do you play?” – and if you don’t do covers (or at least, not covers people might actually have heard of), it can be quite tricky to come up with a useful answer. What folk really want to know is, of course, will they like what you do? And the way they tend to predict that, is by checking whether you sound like a band they already know they enjoy.
The thing about HatND, though, is that the answer depends entirely on which song we are playing at the time. Nelson is modern Celtic folk; Heaven is stompy country rock; Where We Are is a lullaby. And so on (none of those three is on Anything That Moves, by the way). We haven’t thus far dipped our toes into classic blues or smooth jazz – but we definitely treated an Ipswich May Day festival to a seven-minute slice of flute-led psychedelic folk, so we clearly aren’t ruling anything out.
That said, there is definitely a distinct feel to anything we do. The songs may wander about a bit, but they all come from the same place, both geographically and in spirit. The big skies, coastlines, market towns and characters of our native East Anglia seem to find their way into everything we write, whether we plan it that way or not – from the best ageing gangster romance movie never made (The Misfits), through the fable in three acts that plays out in Easy Money, to the toe-curlingly awkward wedding we celebrate in Elephant.
The best way to find out whether you like Helen and the Neighbourhood Dogs’ music, we reckon, is to listen to it. And fortunately, there is now a way to do that even if you can’t get to one of our rare (there are six of us in the band, and whilst an increasing number of us are no longer burdened with the inconvenience of paid employment, it’s still quite tricky getting us all in the same place at the same time) but perfectly formed gigs.
Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, seven of our favourite, self-penned songs can now be delivered directly to your ears whenever you like. This EP has been a long time coming – it’s been nearly 12 years since the first line-up of Helen and the Neighbourhood Dogs played in front of an audience for the first time (at a cricket and beer festival, if you’re asking) – but all the best things take time, and we are extremely happy to present Anything That Moves to the world.
We call what we do ‘East Anglicana’. What does that mean? That, dear listener, is entirely up to you.
In the interests of full disclosure, when it came to the individual tracks I asked a popular AI text generator to rewrite the copy we had in the style of Derek Taylor.
Giveusalink Shane!
https://helenandtheneighbourhooddogs.bandcamp.com/
Any chance of a gig at one of our favourite Suffolk Pubs this time next summer?
Who doesn’t love a traditional old East Angurlan pub?
https://helenandtheneighbourhooddogs.bandcamp.com/album/anything-that-moves
Look – if you’re about we’re having an afternoon soirée at The Dove in the heart of Swinging Downtown Ipswich on Sunday the 26th. Come on over!
Happy to review it for my “employers”, Shane. PM me?
I prefer their earlier stuff.
Overproduced, I find. 😁😉
If the music is half as good as the genre name, then we are in for a treat.
Well it is extremely promising, thus far!!
This little album is really first rate. Highly recommended investment. It’s going in the car this afternoon for (more) repeated listens. It even comes on one of those jet-black, looks-just-like-a-little-LP-with-tracks (how the heck does THAT work?) discs. Top work.
Thank you so very kindly.
Cd arrived today. Enjoyed first listen very much! I hope you get lots of fun gigs promoting it. Thank you and good luck!
Tanx!
Fancy that, I heard the opening track, Easy Money, on the radio yesterday……
“…and now The Wildhearts…” 😁🤘
In case you’re more of a streaming sort of person than a downloader, we also have you covered.
https://music.apple.com/gb/album/anything-that-moves/6785775910
I have the cd. Can lyrics be found anywhere?
To be honest, no. We wanted people to listen to the words, not read them.
It’s ‘White gold anklets’ not ‘white gold ants’ by the way.
Launch party succesfully accomplished. Our thanks also to Lemongrass (Taylor Rae and Sam Hodgson) who played for tips and I don’t think were quite expecting the level of generosity expressed by a crowd gently basking in the sun in a pub beer garden. Sam Hodgson’s dad used to play for Stockport County by the way, which is not the first thing you expect to learn about a folk troubadour from Austin. https://skirky.blogspot.com/2026/07/her-boyfriend-plays-in-scritti-politti.html
Better late than never…..
https://atthebarrier.com/2026/07/28/helen-the-neighbourhood-dogs-anything-that-moves-album-review/
So, tomorrow – the 7th – is what Bandcamp call their fee-free Friday, wherein they don’t take their cut of the price of our downloads or CDs, which makes the maths so much simpler to work out. For example if you download the new Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs mini album for £6 we, as a six-piece band, get £1 each. If on the other hand you decide to buy the physical CD for £7 I go to Waitrose and buy a bottle of their tasty Romanian Pinot Noir. Win-win, basically. First couple of listens are free while you make up your mind. Choose wisely.