Suffice to say we’ve been eagerly awaiting the long overdue arrival of this one. Now properly matured after the epic debut Old And Red and 2022 LP Preludes, Thomas Bush’ undeniably strange song-craft basks comfortably in its own pool of melancholy, a kind so endemic to these British isles. Although as always he’s down but not out. The unhurried opener ‘Same Life Flowed’ welcomes us into his world, one in our minds that’s populated with 3-day old cups of tea and crusts of toast, with baroque flourishes of harpsichord before wriggling out with those trademark spindly guitar picks and lysergic backwards processing on ‘Pure Intention’.
The high-lonesome ‘Thirsting’ plunges down into the depths, a brooding pit of self-lacerating introspection where Thomas’ velvety vocal charms with its sense of vulnerability, whilst the dubbed-out and despondent ‘Mulligan’ wallows in the aftermath. But it’s not all gloom, the languid trudge of ‘Burn Clear’ could be be a Flying Nun 7”, seeing Bush’s vocal at its most Robert Wyatt-esque before being muddied in clips of radio interference.
’Face In The Water’ feels weirdly anthemic with its brash synth chords, here the vocal pacing and delivery feels assured. Despite it’s short run length, by the time the closing elegiac guitar picks of X-trails come in, it feels like we’ve really been a part of something and want to do it all over again. Something that’s steeped in a kind of broken intimacy found in Entlang together with the corduroy-clad bedsit DIY of Flaming Tunes or the those quintessential English eccentrics (Leven Signs, Hamster Records, Push-Button Pleasure, Berbel Nobodius). You get the picture. One that we’ll be listening to for the next 60 years.
