Louis Gardner's grey & melancholy landscapes.
There's a moment, a minute or so into the third track of Louis Gardner's new album, where everything fell into place for me. We can call it an unlocking, a shifting of the light; that moment you look for when spending time with something new, a moment that lets us know something special is stirring into life.
Here, on 'Everywhere You Go', taken from the London songwriter's new Wingspan LP, it's a slightly distorted and distant harmonica drifting in from the shadows, joining the slightly distorted and distant banjo (or possibly a mandolin – both feature on the album) that has been holding the focus up until that point.
As with most moments of what we also call magic, surmising quite why that particular sound reached out and grabbed me is hard to define. There's certainly something beautiful about it, but you wouldn't call the song itself beautiful. It's deliberately a little scrappy, sadness hangs around the edges of it all while the heart of it holds a form of despondency, akin to the colourlessness of a concrete city in fading light.
That description of a greying urban twilight, once noticed, once in place, runs through the heart of the twelve songs that make-up Gardner's new record. Led by his downcast, peeling voice, Wingspan is a skewed, gloomy, and yet completely captivating body of work. Alongside the aforementioned instruments, Gardner also plays dulcimer, zither, harmonica, piano, vibraphone, and even 'bowed glasses' across the album, while a small collection of others add drums, cello, violin, double bass, guitars and trumpet to the mix.
Despite that wide body of textures, and a testament to Gardner's craft, Wingspan always feels full of space and patience – musically, at least. Any claustrophobia, and there are contantl ripples of that here, comes from the bristling energy, the tempered atmosphere that hangs just above the surface of these songs; an oppressive fog that never truly lifts.
At times it reminds of The Books, the skittered, shifting, always inventive backdrop providing a truly distinctive spine that the songs build from. But there are other moods here too. 'White Sky' flirts with Adem-like alt-folk, while 'Wasted Days' is simple and gorgeous, the piano and strings just subtle enough for it to really dig its nails in.
Two songs that perhaps leave the strongest impression, however, are the album's longest cuts, and they elevate this collection to somewhat unexpected heights. 'Oh My Love' is seven-minutes of burned-out, brooding slow-core, something like The Microphones stretched to a layer so thin it becomes tangibly fragile, while closing track 'Trust' goes one further, this time building from almost traditional finger-picked folk sounds, through a full-eight minutes of beguiling textures that very nearly collapses in upon themselves.
A strange and beautiful world, Wingspan is almost immediately stirring, the shapes and layers crafting na imposing shadow that sits right and heavy upon the listeners shoulders. And yet, you're also constantly struck by how much more there must be here to discover here, small inflections and nuances that will reveal themselves over time.
In that way, it all feels both unkempt and secretive; in that way, it all feels beautifully human. Listen below.
Wingspan is out now, via the Lost-Wisdom label, and available to stream and buy via Bandcamp.
