Boots Met My Face - Admiral Fallow

Track list:

1. Dead Against Smoking
2. Squealing Pigs
3. Subbuteo
4. Delivered
5. These Barren Years
6. Old Balloons
7. Bomb Through The Town
8. Four Bulbs
9. Taste The Coast
10. Dead Leg
11. The Sad Clown Cast

Running time: 48 minutes
Released: 2010

I can't remember which festival I saw Admiral Fallow at, I suspect it might have been End of the Road. I was immediately struck by their set and their similarities in origin, demeanor and sound to King Creosote. This of course meant I had to buy up their album when I got home. So I did, and here we are. I don't listen to it much, but I occasionally use Subbuteo to kick off a shuffled playlist; it is the one song I can put any sound to now. I didn't really get on with the follow up album but I am hoping that this will be going back and enjoying a gem that I have overlooked too long.

A wistful clarinet starts us off with a sadness-tinged tune supported by one-note strumming. A strong Scottish accent adorns the voice of our vocalist when he enters the piece, along with drums. The track has built nicely - keys, drums and guitars replacing the woodwind carrying most of the tune. Its a slow, downbeat number, but not overwhelmingly so - there is hope in some of the brighter notes; hope in the context of sadness. I really like the effect, even though the melodies are just recycling by this point.

It is 10.30am on 1 January 2016. I suppose I should say Happy New Year. Replacing the lush sounds of Dead Against Smoking is a lone acoustic guitar rambling through a melody with vocal accompaniment. The pace is higher, emphasised when the drums join in. I am less taken with this tune; the central hook is fine and the execution is alright but it feels as though it is lacking something relative to what went before. A great screech and crescendo adds nothing. Hah, screech is in the lyrics; funny how we pick things up subconsciously - I only noticed after using the term myself. I am so glad when it ticks over to Subbuteo - this song has a real attraction to me. Light guitar hook, wistful air, soft vocal and a less than pretty picture painted by the lyrics - it feels heartfelt and personal, a portrait of a childhood. The structure, spread out single beats below the busy guitar and supported by a background quietly laid behind it all but managing to lift it up all the same, gives a really solid core. It builds suddenly into a crashing, cry for help of an outro; I thought there was a more impassioned plea in the vocal to go with that - maybe I missed it this time, but more likely I misremembered it.

We drop back to guitar and voice for Delivered. I don't think the group are as good when stripping out the depth of sound that we have had from woodwind, strings, keys and drums. This is noodly nothingness. There is, however a great musicality in the vocal... and of course as I type that he goes for notes that don't quite work, giving a jarring sound. Not a great track, but a brief one. The larger sound is back for These Barren Years. I am not taken with what lyrics I pick up here, but there is a nice rounded rumble to the progression of the tune up until the point they start repeating the chorus when I feel that it all falls apart. It isn't interesting enough to support heavy repetition.

The album seems to alternate between big sounds and smaller ones. Old Balloons is stripped back again, a rapid looping guitar hook and piano tune. It threatens to explode into a larger number at moments but has yet to quite manage it. Eventually the electric pickup arrives with drums and it is a relief - not that the opening was bad, but that the promise to expand was not an empty one. The keys become grander in scale with it, carrying the bulk of the tune, and the keys are all that is left once the crescendo has passed and the track begins to build again. I find myself enjoying the piece despite myself when it goes all mental for the last minute. A chorus played with extra intensity, pace and volume and repeated twice is the end of the vocal and the end of the track. The build felt like it deserved that end, rather than in some cases where the explosion of activity feels unmerited.

We have a female lead vocal on Bomb Through the Town, a floating voice over a backing that grows on me as she starts holding notes for longer. The harmony when the regular lead singer joins in is an odd one. It doesn't always work, but when it does it is really sublime. The thing is their disparate voices handle some notes very differently - strain against natural inclinations - but where they are both in range they offset each other nicely, not competing for space. The tune is actually dull as anything. A plodding drone, the only good thing to say is that I only really noticed how boring it is once the vocal was no longer present. I don't know about rediscovering a gem, but this listen is interesting - a bit more thought provoking for me than some recently. For instance, I find myself wondering to what extent ones surroundings influence the creations we make, with this album clearly identifiable as Scottish even without the accents.

Taste the Coast is pleasantly happier, pacier and catchier. Harmonies again in the chorus, a homecoming tale. There is a moment in the middle of the song where the busier elements of the backing drop out and we get a simple chorus with that harmony and it is a lovely little moment. The happy buzz disappears for the lead out. Vocals start repeating a line that had not appeared to date, pace drops, a subdued piano wandering comes in... it all works much better than it should in truth. The same cannot be said of the penultimate track, a 7 minute long oeuvre, the first half of which is disappointingly barren, not much music and a vocal that doesn't inspire. We get a bit more development past the half way mark but it is still staid and plodding. The development is limited, too - I kept expecting it to build further and do a little more to replace the vocal, which has vanished, but we just repeat the same phrase over and over. This one is for the scrap heap.

The bonus track on the end (I don't think it was on the original 2010 release; the album was re-issued in 2011) uses electronics that immediately make me think of Mogwai, specifically tracks from Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will - this album being produced by Paul Savage, who has a hand in producing that record, and many others I own. I miss the rest of the tune whilst confirming that, but while it is a low key ending, it is a far more fitting one that Dead Leg's disappointment.

All Creatures Will Make Merry - Meursault

Track List:

1 Payday
2 Crank Resolutions
3 All Creatures Will Make Merry... Under Pain of Death
4 Weather
5 One Day This'll All Be Fields
6 What You Don't Have
7 Another
8 New Ruin
9 Sleet
10 Song for Martin Kippenberger
11 A Fair Exchange

Running time: 45 minutes
Released: 2010

So this is going to be interesting. I only have vague impressions of this album - and not liking it much. Why I picked it up, my initial though was that I was on a kick for all things Scottish finding a lot of great low-fi folk and indie on LastFM, but this released to late to be in the wave of purchases that followed those discoveries. No idea how this will work out, so lets find out!

The opening is dark - footsteps... but that tone is lost with the first note, which introduces mournfulness. It is a strange opening, especially given that plus some indistinct backing is all there is to Payday.

Crank Resolutions has more to it, but there is an odd distance about the sound - both the vocal and the music behind it seem removed from their present somehow. I do not recognise this at all despite somehow having racked up 40+ plays of Meursault over 4 years. There is an electronic edge to this - not at all what I was expecting. It's not bad. Meursault are named for the protagonist in L'Etranger by Camus. This does not predispose me to like them - having to read that book, in the original French, was one of the hardest and dullest things I had to do at school. I can see why they might have chosen the name, and I guess it adds an artistic choice to the distance between the listener and the sounds recorded. Particularly the vocal, which is very muted, distant on each track so far. It is not a technique that I have (consciously) heard used a lot and it gives this album a stand out feature.

I have to say, I am enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would before I started. 

There is a touch of Admiral Fallow about Weather, another Scottish indie-folk band so I guess it is not that much of a surprise. I am not keen on the muted strings or the lyric/delivery of One Day This'll All Be Fields though the song just does nothing for me and the sounds which accompany its denouement are ugly... presaging the next track which is really rather too off-key as it launches. Nor does it improve noticeably, consisting mostly of the same distant vocal and a very bland driving rhythm.

Another swaps one bland for another (I see what I did there). This time a bland guitar melody. However in this case the blandness of the accompaniment helps the distinctive vocal style because there is no competition for attention. It makes the voice more distinct whilst keeping the distance that has characterised the album. The problem I find with the song is that whilst it has a strong character, it does not seem to have a strong heart - I find that despite finding the vocal line very clear and well delivered (I like the distance, I have decided), having just finished listening to it I could not tell you a single lyric from it. The actual content thus proves forgettable, even as  - or perhaps because - the style is very memorable.

New Ruin may be my favourite track on this album. There is good drive, neat instrumentation, decent electronics and the same vocal delivery that has marked the other tunes. Lyrically it is still unremarkable to the point of blank memory but the different elements that Meursault have shown through the disc are combined here to produce a tune I really like. 

I have finally realised what the distant vocal reminds me of: Pink Floyd's The Wall. It is a strange bedfellow, because the tone here is very different to that double album, generally speaking. There is far less anger on show. Reinforcing the idea that Meursault are odd ducks is the ode to Martin Kippenberger. It starts with great momentum but dies off and runs too long, but at least I have now heard of a hard-drinking German artist who died young. Good trade?

The album ends quietly, and that is probably a fair indication that the album has peaks and troughs. Overall it is a decent work, with a couple of disappointments and a real high point. There is a pretty strong character to the disc with the vocal style flowing through the whole thing. I thought I might be cutting this before I listened to it, but having done so, there is no call for that.