Echoes and dust

After emerging blinking into the limelight from their rustic folk hole last year, with the acclaimed 'Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down' and the single '5 years time', it would have been easy for the band to churn out another chirpy, twee and whimsical affair complete with saccharin girl/boy harmonies and all gushing grinning to each other over the microphone, but instead we get an altogether different beast. Twee this is not - thank God! Be warned if you've just gone through a break up or are having a relationship crisis, it may be advisable to remove any rope, razor blades or exhaust pipes from the house (not that an exhaust pipe unconnected to a car can do THAT much damage). 'Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down' mark two this is most definitely not, and I for one love it.

Empty your mind and picture a series of black and white photos:

First: A desolate harbour, populated by one solitary wreck of a boat, stuck deep in the mud, which appears blacker than tar.
Next: An old man with a flat cap, sitting alone on a bench, in a deserted, mist covered park, staring into middle distance.
Next: The same man nursing a pint, looking out of the window of a pub, a slightly out of focus barmaid and regular, conspiratorially laughing in the background.
Finally: A granite house surrounded by moor land, next to it a single tree, bent at its top to create a 130 degree angle as the wind bullies it.

This is the world that 'First Days Of Spring' inhabits, albeit with the occasional splash of colour. For a perfect example look no further than 'Our Window' with its solitary piano, gradually joined by the most melancholy of instruments the cello. Although the song builds incorporating lightly plucked guitar and subtle drums, it manages to maintain its sense of loss but with an outlook that it can be rebuilt; 'Well I don't think that it’s the end but I know we can't keep going.....cos blue skies are coming but I know that its hard'. This can also be witnessed on the opener and title track which, after starting like classic Sigur Ros, ends with shimmering euphoric orchestral sweeps leaving the listener with an unbridled sense of optimism, and this sets the stage for the whole album - the constant battle and juxtaposition between the pain of a broken heart and optimism of a bright future.

'I Have Nothing' is a stripped down, soul baring paean to lost love, with Colin Fink's voice accompanied by strummed acoustic and layered choral chants bringing to mind early Damian Jurado, as does 'My Broken Heart' albeit mixed in with elements of Lou Reed and John Cale's 'Songs For Drella' and Bill Callaghan's vocal style. Again, it dilutes it's depressive inclinations with a view that time is a healer; 'Oh, I'll be laughing again'. It also breaks away from the minimal acoustic feel with a rip roaring fuzzed out guitar solo to end on.

The middle section of the album is a bizarre change of direction. Emerging from the weary but slightly optimistic tone of the first third of the album comes an orchestral track that sounds like it should soundtrack Father Christmas' first flight in his sled. It's filled with delight, expectation and excitement, which segues into a choral explosion and a jaunty piano motif, and proclamation of 'Give me the love of an orchestra' here perhaps filling the void left by the love that he has just lost.  This surprising section ends more on a familiar tone with solitary reverb drenched guitar accompanied only by the distant lapping of waves on 'Instrumental II'.

On 'Stranger' we see Fink experiencing the anticlimax of a one night stand - the elation expected replaced instead by a sense of despair 'Everything I've loved has gone away'. But again it ends on a positive note 'You know in a year it's going to be better, you know in a year I'm going to be happy'. However, you can't help but feel that this is the sound of someone attempting to convince themselves that everything will be alright but not really believing themselves.

Finally, the album ends with a olive branch in the form of 'My Door Is Always Open' which recalls early acoustic Coldplay before they got their U2 complex. It also boasts some gorgeous pedal steel that compliments the guitar and melody perfectly and leaves you yearning for more. This is how albums should end, not one of those songs that go on for years as the epic finale until you get bored - this leaves you wanting their next album to follow immediately.

In short this is bloody great. A stark and honest insight into one man’s heartbreak and the possible light at the end of the tunnel. An album of heartbreak songs from a bright talent swiftly emerging as the successor to Stuart Murdoch but without all that annoying tweeness.

Top Tracks: First Days Of Spring', ‘I Have Nothing’.

Out August 31 on Marcury