Crooked Words #15: Mildred, Natalie Wildgoose, Sean Solomon, Emily Sprague
Mildred – Fenceline
The excellent new record from Mildred appeared last week. A four-piece from Oakland, California, they describe themselves as "four singers and four songwriters", which probably means that their greatest trick is finding a way to collate those various tones and visions into one beautifully cohesive set of songs.
A tempered, country-tinged collection of story songs, Fenceline is at its endearing best when delivering patient Bill Callahan-esque wanders through tender instrumentation and wide open skies. The details across the album are rich and resplendent, whether thats a short turn-of-phrase that catches the ear, or a swaying guitar solo that shimmers like long gold light.
The album's book-ends emphasise Mildred's shifting perspectives – and their gritty magic. Opening track 'UPS Brown' is a wonderful introduction. Suitably moody but never imposing, it sits like a stretched-out evening, all light and lingering, a revolving cast of people and places are brought deftly to life as the whole thing rolls on and on. While the closing track, 'Hardcore of Beauty', is something else one more, a skewed kind of electricity, brooding and heartfelt lyrics that all build to a heaving finale of weighty guitars and scorched, unnerving sounds somewhere in the shadows of it all.
It's the kind of closing track that leaves you sitting in silence for just a little while, held in that space between the record and rest of it. And then, at the end of it all, you're left with the feeling that there's going to be so much more to find here, that things will go deeper the more time we spend in its homely, compelling company.
Natalie Wildgoose – Rural Hours
Held with that sense of space and time that ripples through the most engaging folk singers, Rural Hours is a new EP from London-based songwriter Natalie Wildgoose. Formed of six songs – though the opener is just a brief 40-second foreword – the songs here are beguiling in their tenderness, delicate compositions breathed into life by Wildgoose's striking voice.
To be filed alongside the likes of Sibylle Baier, Clara Mann, Jospehine Foster et al, Wildgoose crafts a small space for herself in her work but fills it with a multitude of gentle wonder. 'Nobody On The Path' is dream-like and strangely haunting, the simple guitar joined by splashes of fiddle and keys that elevate the whole thing, bringing sunlight into the darker corners, while 'River Days' is somewhat breezier in its formation, rippling forward with a Nick Drake-like sense of charm.
Closing track 'In The North' might be the standout here though, the pastoral nature of the storytelling, that drifts through rural scenes of fog and deer and dark tangled moorland, able to build a whole compelling world of its own in just four-and-a-half minutes that genuinely move and transfix.
Sean Solomon – The World Is Not Good Enough
While the cover art for Sean Solomon's new LP shows a cartoon world of creatures in full colour, it's the album title that holds a more pertinent key to the shape of the music held within. Offering something far more grainy and of this world, often sharply so, The World Is Not Good Enough wraps heavy sentiments and stories inside its endearingly heartfelt brand of indie rock.
Formed of eight songs, which also feature the wonderful Shannon Lay on guitar and vocals, Solomon's new record is grizzly but alive, able to take the heavy details found in songs like 'Car Crash', 'Shooting Star' and 'Black Hole' and infiltrate them with little glimpses of something sweeter; a distant silver-lining, a flash of a half-smile.
It's perhaps Solomon's voice that handles this balancing act, his deadpan delivery almost conversational in tone, able to rise and fall, quicken and recline when it needs to, when it knows just the best way to sing its blues.
Sometimes brash and bold, occasionally stripped back bare, the songs here are bruised and tender, but they hold something akin to hope that doesn't quite make sense but exists regardless, ensuring that even as we lie in the weeds with these songs we never quite feel like we're doing it alone.
Emily A. Sprague – Double Moon
Over the past few years, Emily A. Sprague has shared her musical craft between two distinct arms: that of her band Florist, who have released five wonderful albums and more over the past decade, and her own ambient/synth instrumentals that have gently bubbled away alongside.
Very exciting news then that last week Emily shared a new song from a forthcoming new release that "marks the beginning of a previously uncharted map for me – the realms that combine my modular synthesizer work and my singing/songwriting."
'Double Moon' is the releases A-side and does exactly as it says and suggests, while still conjuring an unexpected sense of wonder. It might only be two-and-a-half minutes in length but it feels like gentle revelation, the dizzying spell of the synth backdrop balanced by Emily's signature voice that winds through the strange, vibrant shapes it finds itself existing within.
Another new song, 'Dusk (How To Fly)', will accompany the release alongide a dub version of 'Double Moon' by the Australian producer Andras. You can hear the whole thing when it's released via the excellent RVNG Intl. label on May 29.
