Beautiful, tender, melancholic and poetic, a walking-pace acoustic folk and Americana debut solo release by the singer-songwriter Felix Mackenzie-Barrow, co-lead singer with Nottingham alternative indie band Divorce. Delicious guitar and banjo accompany his deep, melancholy voice, reminiscent of something between Elliott Smith, Leonard Cohen and Simon & Garkunkel, his songs have a tranquility and lo-fi charm, but were also written and recorded quickly in short periods of self-imposed quiet time, while on tour with Divorce, with many songs capturing travel, staring out of vehicle windows and solitude, as evidenced on the lovely strummed, wistful opener Song By A Stranger: “The fairground is empty and silent / Everyone’s gone to the moon/ I’m in a hotel by the roadside/ I’m in a van going eighty-five.” Standout track All The Good Things is a gorgeous, intimate, poetic love song with finger-picking and arresting, delicate images: “The moon, dinner plate / Hanging high above the garden gate / It looks just like the night we woke up shivering / I walked you to the bathroom right across the way / An early frost, creeping off the moor above /Chilled you to the bone and set my heart apace.” The rain-washed There You Go I Love You is a slow, dreamy, melancholy missing-you and heartbreak song, with gentle acoustic and dashes of discordant electric: “Took the wind to shake me / Took a mountain to be free / I lost you on the summit / But you never left my side.” North Atlantic Ocean also captures a moment in the middle of nowhere in transit, with Mackenzie-Barrow adding vocal harmony overdubs to his lead: “They towed the car / We were standing in the street 6-pack of beers in the crook of my left arm / Way too many cigarettes to take home But we stood there untethered like two mountain goats / And in the electrical storm We held each other warm.”
This is very much the delicious, poetic stuff typical of this exquisite release, The Quiet Was a Heron also reminiscent of Nick Drake: “Wake your sleepy head / We’re coming in to land / Warp and weft again / I got undressed and missed your hands / I went round the bend / I tried to run, I couldn’t stand / I watch the heron fly.” Every track is a gem, from I Lean to the pin-drop quiet Big Love, all the way to the closer Stones in Your Bag: “Just me and you in a hotel / At the end of the world.” Gorgeous. Out on Gravity Records / Capitol Records.
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