Released 28th September, Dead Light Records.


A cursory listen to Seven Roads, and you could be forgiven for dismissing it as yet another Joanna Newsom-a-like.

However, on closer inspection, you are left with a record which gently seeps into your awareness like a hot broth on a cold day.  The main songwriter and frontlady Jenny Reeve may have featured on Snow Patrols Eyes Open, but please don’t let that put you off... 

Her newest offering is an inventive work, building some electronic noodlings onto an acoustic base and creating an expansive imagery that conjures up a bleak, autumnal scene.  Images of a group of musicians perched around a fireplace in a busy pub spring to mind, with thirsty onlookers supping well-earned pints of a certain black stout...

The opening lines from ‘Cold Hands’ set the ambience for the record, “This is how we live in frosty weather, when the darkness pushes us together” – wintery and dark, but with a warmth and companionship that consistently comes to the fore.  The occasional touches of Reeve's Scottish accent only offer to accentuate the rootsy Celtic tone from the lyrics and the sweeping strings.  

Luckily, the songs are all well measured and leave space to breathe.  So often with nu-folk the strings seem to be plastered all over the songs, as if the songwriters have a desperate need to cover every inch of silence with real-life folkyness to prove their authenticity and superior musicianship at every turn.  Not so here.  Track 4, ‘The Things I Can’t Explain’ is an incredibly well-judged and well-paced song, with gorgeous layers and an unexpected touch of Radiohead/ Bends style wistfulness and swooping lead guitar which lifts the song beautifully.

This changes again with the beautiful ‘Train of Thought’, a melancholy and slightly ominous beginning; “A leaf skeleton with a frosty trim”, with eerie violin loops and poignant piano that wouldn’t be out of place on a teen vampire series (Buffy, anyone?).  The second half of the song lifts like a new dawn, and then falls back into a thoughtful reverie, classical in tone.

This is a recurring theme throughout.  There is a little too much electronic for it to be folk, is lyrically too strong to be pop, and vocally too vulnerable and endearing to fit into the tedious female-led-acoustic-band mould.

Joanna Newsome has undoubtedly had a strong influence on Jenny Reeve's vocal which, while obviously not a bad thing itself, has been done...and done...and done.  You can’t swing a cat without smacking a Joanna mini-me in the face, and most of the time they are horribly inferior, reedy-voiced imitations, relying on shoe removal and strange hand movements for an attempt at kookiness.

Luckily, Reeve has neither a reedy voice nor any weird hands (that I know of), instead a refined voice that veers easily between the breathy and the forceful.  Her touches on the violin are lovingly placed to highlight the introspective tone of the lyrics, with enough  bittersweet  moodiness to mope around in a booze induced depression; then enough moments of joy to lift you back into humanity again.

This easy juxtaposition of emotions is displayed in ‘Breathing Exercise’, an upbeat-sounding track peppered with hints at darker feelings; “I’ve taken all the drugs and drink I could to calm me down”, the whole song betraying a feeling of nostalgia under the jovial exterior.

Considering the wealth of talent that worked on this record, it is no surprise that the finished sound is (perhaps too) perfectly polished.  Not only was it produced by Paul Savage (Mogwai, Franz Ferdinand), but the collective band being made up of members of Snow Patrol, Idlewild and  Arab Strap leaves very little room for error.  The album is hard work to listen to all at once however, with the songs not being as diverse as they could have been; I think this is less to do with the songs themselves, and more perhaps to do with over-production.

That said, this album is a captivating offering infused with folky, earthy tones running alongside dark, Nick Cave style narratives. Reeve nails the cinematic shoe-gazing that Howling Bells did so well (first album), without sounding contrived or melodramatic (Howling Bells’ second album), and as such deserves to stand out among the hordes of female singer/songwriters attempting to do just this.

 

Posted In Album Reviews, Oct 08 2009. Words - Rachel