The music from this English collective once suggested a troubled stillness. The songs went without contrivance, were pretty at times, and rarely insubstantial. Nocturnal noises enjoyed a fruitful compositional dialectic with shimmering guitar figures, bolstered by thick clouds of warm hum or the distinctive rasp from one of many loyal vocal collaborators. More recently, the group has not been able to transcend this model, and have been left to turn in on themselves, as though paralysed by their own image. Rather than an underlying stillness, it is movement and the first glimmerings of its cessation that have Johnson and co. furrowing their collective brow. On ‘Halfway Through,’ a piece full of charged moments, lulls, and unexpected shifts, Johnson muses “I’m halfway through/I’m halfway through/Where to go and what to do/ Now everything is overdue” and sounds like a man verging on mid-life crisis. It might be fair to presume, then, that Johnson is here reliving some of the much adored musical predilections of years past – namely, hazy rock music that is loud, to the point, and without much strategy. Indeed, the next track, ‘Saints Preserve Us’ has an episodic structure that is lithe and fluid and which roars ahead in a wanton manner, the sliding bass riff acting as foil for relentlessly chugging guitar as Johnson sings “You’ve been living your life like you’re fixing to die/You’ve been living your life, but you don’ know why.” Undoubtedly, there is something equal turns appealing and unsightly about all of this inward grubbing about, in all of these incestuous transactions with one’ own image. On a certain level, the barefaced approach to the material is to be perhaps admired, but for all that, a bit of makeup or camouflage would have done many parts a great deal of good.
As per usual, the album is a sojourn through numerous loosely connected styles. Asides from the aforementioned jagged pointillistic fragments and outright rock anthems, the work is marked by the twanging harmonics and murky beats of pieces such as ‘England’s Always Better (As You’re Pulling Away)’ and the slow, dramatic vistas of the title track. Singer Angele David-Guillou – who recently released her own debut album – remains the groups trump card, her elegant, satiny voice caresses ‘Incurable (Reprise)’ and ‘Soldier Song,’ two of the album’s standout selections. The former piece features a waterfall of guitar chords of some extravagance while on the latter a jaunty rhythm guitar sits squarely on the beat, displaying some intuitive magic. These two tracks are also permeated by a certain European flair and nicely puncture Johnson’s bubble which, admittedly, on compositions such as ‘Cities & Factories,’ appears unattractively stagnant and musty in its unwillingness to allow in any divergent approaches.
Max Schaefer
