single review / video premiere
South Shore
The Ballad of Rats Bay / Blanche
Limited 7″ Vinyl / DL
release date: 15 May 2026
Debut single, Double A side, released thanks to a CIC fundraiser to focus on music based on Medway folk tales. South Shore are the areas newest indie folk band, crafting haunting melodies inspired by the legends, ghosts, and the mysterious River Medway that runs through their hometown. Ged Babey is captivated but insists these songs are universal and not just for local folk. The Ballad of Rats Bay in particular.
This is one of the best love songs you will hear all year. Or any year. It really is a classic. It’s on a par with Chrissie Hynde and Kirsty MacColl at their very best.
Singer Rachel Lowrie has a fantastic voice… and the lyric is fabulous.
I wish I could understand
And not confuse
Patterns of behaviour with… love
Patterns of behaviour aren’t love
And then there is Stuart Turners guitar. The playing and the sheer beauty of the ascending guitar pattern.
The second it finishes you want to hear it again. Always the mark of not just a good song, but a great one.
It is the strength and beauty of the performance which elevates the song. But if the song wasn’t utterly brilliant in the first place it wouldn’t’ve inspired the performance.
I’ve checked with experts in the field of ‘great songs’ namely my wife and LTW Radio DJ Wallace Dobbin, that the song really is the work of genius that I think it is and they both concur, mentioning Dusty Springfield, classic 60’s movie soundtracks and Kirsty MacColls way with harmonies in passing.
Forty or fifty years ago, independently released songs like this would have been swooped upon by cigar-chomping. star-maker music biz moguls waving chequebooks and making sure it was a worldwide hit, blasting out of every radio. I don’t think that sort of thing happens nowadays but this song deserves to be picked up by BBC radio and given a wider audience than the 100 people who will buy the vinyl and a hundred more the download. It’s way too good to be a niche/cult hit.
Because I have corresponded with and written about Stuart Turner as part of Pod and the And One Red Mitten project in the past, I messaged him about the song.
Tell me about the Ballad…
(Stuart) The Ballad of Rats Bay is about Rachel talking to the river/herself about the end of a relationship. Rats Bay is a bend in the Medway that creates mud flats full of shopping trolleys, traffic cones and hardy wildlife (feral swans, muscular ducks, gulls and rodents). It holds a Pier (Sun Pier) which provides a walkway out into the river. Anyway, there she is holding this conversation and hearing the river tell her that patterns of behaviour aren’t love… The song and lyrics are very much Rachels. I have always thought of it as her questioning why the mess of her relationship seemed to mirror the mess around the rivers edge. That’s my interpretation anyway.
(Rachel) The strange thing is I didn’t realise the song was about a relationship ending until over a year – 18 months after I wrote it. It took me that long to listen to the rivers advice… the river is saying that we can change the patterns we find ourselves in… we have agency… there is hope… and love requires action from all parties involved… it’s not passive… in my life, as I changed my patterns – my behaviour – the relationship I was in could not be sustained.
There’s not so much a resolution, more a change of heart as the song progresses: From ‘patterns of behaviour aren’t love’ at the start, to ‘Please become familiar’ at the end. So maybe the patterns ARE a big part of love after all?
(Rachel) I think it’s curious as to which patterns we find ourselves in – as humans, following muscle memory and habit – what we are programmed into – but the river says we can change that – the outcome is not inevitable… The patterns are the holder/conduit for the love or not love so yes, they are a part of our experience of love.
It only occurred to me today, after hearing the song a dozen times, that ‘confusing patterns of behaviour with...’ could be interpreted as autism/neuro-diversity. Was that at all in mind when the lyric was written?
(Rachel) I think that’s very astute… at the time of writing I didn’t have autism in mind at all, but maybe it is about that – my undiagnosed neurodiversity…
Oh, I just watch all the documentaries and TV dramas about neurodiversity – A lot of us are undiagnosed and curious. Maybe we just want answers when it’s simple, we’re ALL different and have our funny little ways. I don’t want to ‘over-analyse’ the song, cos it’s just brilliant as it is.
(Rachel) I love that – ‘we’re all different and have our funny little ways’…
Well, you would, and you do. Not many people seek relationship advise from the River Medway.
(Rachel) You cheeky whatsit!
………….
Whether it reflects neuro-divergence or not, it’s just a fabulous song – but the single is a Double A side, because the band thought Blanche was just as good, described in the press release by Rachel thus…
I sat in the castle gardens last December after work and looked up at the castle keep wondering what spirits where there and went home and found out about Blanche, the grey lady of Rochester Castle… and wrote a song for her…
It’s a beauty as well, but any song which starts with a bossa nova beat still makes me immediately think of Roland Rivrons ‘Raw Sex’ which is kinda off-putting. By the one-minute mark though Rachels voice is soaring. Once the locked box of spirits is opened it really is a magical song about the layers of time that exist in one place.
South Shore are:
– Rachel Lowrie (The Ashen Keys, Senior Service)
– Stuart Turner (Flat Earth Society, These Guilty Men. Pod)
– Nick Rice (The Treasures of Mexico, Groovy Uncle)
– Rob Grigg (The Dentists)
Photos by Nikki Price. Single art by Darryl Hartley. Backing vocal on Rats Bay by Lauren Fromow
As usual the singer and guitar-hero get all the attention, but without the top-flight rhythm section Nick and Rob, they would be just ‘buskers’…
I can’t wait for the album…
The single release is a whole month away – the vinyl is limited so order now if you are as taken with the songs. And tell Gideon Coe the news.
South Shores ‘online presence’ is under the name South Shore of the Medway incidentally, as its more pinpoint googleable as there are many South Shores. But it’s too cumbersome for artwork and posters.
Launch Gig – Fri 15 May 2026 -Rochester Social Club – Tickets
All words Ged Babey except quotes, PR content and lyrics in italics.
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