Like a slow caress of wry beauty, a deliciously paced alt-folk-Americana debut by the English producer and multi-instrumentalist with a collection aptly described as 'twinkling like a glitterball in an abandoned dancehall’. If so, it’s a very slow dance indeed, intimate, melancholy, but darkly humorous, sometimes a gentle waltz, often a slow stroll, this is an album that really takes its time, gently rippling with with smoothly sliding lap steel, piano, guitar, gentle percussion and sensitive, jittery saxophone and gliding violin. Collaborators include his wife and fellow singer-songwriter Dana Gavanski (bass), Charlie Stock (violin and viola) and John Johanna on (electric guitar).
Dark humour pervades, partly because sublime melody and arrangement is juxtaposed with significantly unglamorous reality. County Line for example, dreamily paints a vivid picture of drug dealing across the English countryside: “Salty little tear falling on the county line / Pocketful of fears, deliveries arrive on time”, including the character of the ever-present dealer, aka The Snowman (“call me anytime”). There’s an ongoing flavour of slow-motion tragedy, or even apocalypse throughout, with echoes of Leonard Cohen, sometimes, faintly, even of the subtler, early psych of Pink Floyd. Further highlights include the multiple ironies of Family Values (“children of the nuclear age, they lived through the difficult stage …”); Child Starz; the lovely rising melody of The Reckoning; When The Sun Dies (“Will there be still people to say farewell? /Will there still be lovers on the ground to scream I love you?”); the rippling beauty of Last Words Of A Cult Leader (“say goodnight to grandma”); and Baloo, based on the traditional Scottish song, Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament, sung by mother to child about father who has gone of to war and dies, but bloodily returns in, just in a dream, to kiss his offspring. Underpinned by four gorgeously interspersed, atmospheric violin-led instrumentals (Level 1-4), this is an album that simmers in slow, unflinching tragic beauty. Worth far more than a quick peek. Out on Faith And Industry.
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