Initially starting as a side project and releasing a debut in 2008, the sophomore album from the Melbourne experimental folk duo contains the vibrancy and innovation that all great side projects should. Mixing folk and pop moments alongside more ambient and electronic textures with field recordings, the album is a restless and winding sonic journey full of charming meanderings.
‘I Defy You’ is an early highlight; built on a simple organ progression, the disparate rhythm sources cough along and are accompanied by little more than a hazy vocal melody for a rousing climax. The album’s centrepiece – the sort-of title track ‘Far Away Choirs’ – teases with a chugging spaghetti western guitar before collapsing into a sea of twitchy ambience. The drums and guitar slowly wrangle and unfurl themselves out of the mess to morph to a joyous and spacious finale.
It’s not all this wide and open though – the ironically titled ‘Come Play Frolic’ is a claustrophobic dirge. Elsewhere ‘Standing On The Beach At Ponta Delgada’ begins with beautifully calming field recordings of exactly that, with gentle guitar strums and heavily manipulated vocals. It’s a stunningly small and intimate moment in an album that more often than not concerns itself with big and bold moments.
Impeccably produced, perfectly paced and edited without a moment wasted, The Electric Sounds of Far Away Choirs is an album with a wide and disparate palette of sounds but with an innate, cohesive character. The duo is obviously not content to stay in the one space for too long, and it’s never a problem when your musical vocabulary is as varied and thrilling as theirs obviously is.
Wyatt Lawton-Masi
