Brick Lane Records (label)
25 September 2015 (released)
27 September 2015
The great outdoors and landscapes are the images that come to mind listening to this album from Austin Crane. There’s a spacial sparseness about these songs that work within his guitar based framework, filled out with his voice and occasionally collaborator Amy Godwin.
Ob Lightning opens the album and is a template for what follows: simple sounding finger picking guitar with Crane’s slightly nasal vocal complementing it. One of the highlights is Only Friend; a haunting beautiful song featuring a slightly off centre vocal from Ms Goodwin. And it is Ms Godwin’s vocals that lift these songs out of what could have been quite a repetitive formula, as she does on Something Like Someone and Another Way Home.
The album never gets into a rut as such but it does tend to flow into one over a few songs, and at times it does feel a little long. The lengthy Goodness arrests this as it subtly shifts gears, moods and direction midway through, and closes with the disconcerting When I Was A Child.
This is deceptively complex album that at once feels welcoming and alienating. Sometimes you think you get it only for it slip away later. It’s not a difficult listen just not easy album to warm to. Repeated listens help but one rather ends up admiring the music than forming any real emotional attachment to it.