Bard For Life

• Posted: Thu 4 Nov 2010
• By: Aidy

Cambridge’s favourite charango playing word smith Rishi Naag is back once again, with his band Karmadillo and since we last heard from them they’ve become an award winning, signed act, winning both the Summer Song writing competition at Geek Pop and the prestigious Cambridge Busking Festival 2010.

Shortly after these latest achievements they were picked up by UkeyLove Records, who are putting out their latest folk-pop extravaganza entitled ‘Bard For Life’.

The album is described as “a retrospective of Karmadillo work in the naughties” and features contributions from many other Cambridge musicians including Jon Craven from Liquid Sky, accordian maestro Karl Sandeman and Tom Barden, drummer from the Pony Collaboration.

This diversity of collaborators certainly shows in the album’s production and works well as a busy and eventful soundscape through which Rishi seems to effortlessly weave his geek laden lyrics.

Highlights include the insanely catchy ‘No One Else’ which wouldn’t sound out of place on a movie soundtrack like Juno and the highly amusing ‘Rent Boy’, which appears to be an autobiographical song documenting Rishi’s inability to get onto the property ladder.

It’s difficult to pigeonhole Karmadillo, but if I was to give it a go, I’d suggest that they sit somewhere between George Formby and David Byrne.This is an exceptional record, and a great re-cap over the career of a long standing members of the Cambridge Singer-Songwriter scene.

Bard For Life is available now on iTunes, for more information check out