To be perfectly honest, this is the best part of writing about music.
It’s like leading your grandad down to the bottom of the garden to show him where you saw the goblins disappear. Arthur Rigby and the Baskervylles do not live at the bottom of your garden (more’s the pity) but their music, full of lush imagery and sudden blasts of melodic fantasy, inspire that same child-like excitement you used to get from leaping between rocks at the beach or shimmying up a tree trunk on the first sunny day of the year.
Arthur Rigby isn’t a person, since you ask. Or Eleanor Rigby’s long-lost brother. Arthur Rigby comprises eight musicians from Leeds, gathered under the banner of front man/guitarist Benjamin, who started with just one other compadre to help translate his incredible imagination into musical-type notes. In 2009 he was joined by Alex, Neil, Hannah, James, Katie, Tom and Dan as bandmates, playing drums, piano, violin, trumpet, saxophone/flute, trombone and bass respectively.
It’s strange to think of ‘Tales From Pegasus Wood’ as their first EP. It has such a depth of feeling and harmonious texture, you can’t help but admire how far they’ve come in such a relatively short amount of time. They’re billed as ‘orchestral pop’, but there’s more than a hint of folksy, music hall-type thinking at work in this vast, inventive sound.
There are shades of the prog folk movement that sprang up between the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, conjuring up the splendidly operatic sounds of Procol Harum’s ‘Conquistador’, The Strawbs’ ‘New World’ or Jethro Tull’s ‘The Whistler’. Benjamin for one certainly has more than a sprinkling of Ian Anderson’s gentlemanly enunciation, and it suits the Baskervylles’ sound very well indeed.
What distinguishes Arthur Rigby and the Baskervylles is a clear-minded focus on songsmanship. With a written score by Benjamin rather than some scribbled chords on a music stand, the emphasis is on nuances of tone; instrumental passages are intricate but concentrated and purposeful, rather than extended jam sessions. So it is that ‘Dark Clouds’ sets a scene of building tension, like the crackling air before a storm. This isn’t a first track, it’s a first act.
As to Benjamin’s lyrics, they embody the stirring, Tolkienesque spirit of the music with nary a word wasted. They’re so marvellously visual: “Meet me by the Abbey to walk the bluebell carpet and through the Greenbelt woodland”. It’s clear the man loves words, and knows how to use them to striking effect.
You can’t help but come away feeling like Peter Jackson has chosen the wrong soundtrack to his Hobbit films. Songs like ‘Follow’ and ‘Ode To Gog’ manage to be solemn and enchanting and just the sort of music to toast a pint of ale to after a hard day’s dragon slaying. You could definitely picture these humble shire folk lighting up clay pipes and setting the world to rights between numbers.
To be fair, they do seem to be drawing from a much wider sphere of influence than Tolkien. ‘One Stormy Night’ reminds you why Destroywerk designed the EP’s cover with the majesty of mother nature in mind; what other earthly answer can there be to that triumphant cry of “last night I slept amongst the haybales”? Our narrator loses track of time, of everyone around him as the mountains and the crash of clouds all but sweep him away with raw, unashamed wonder at the world.
It was said it felt strange to think of this as their first EP; perhaps, if there is a fault to ‘Tales From Pegasus Wood’, it’s because five songs isn’t enough. These songs deserve to be part of a greater work. They’re big and they’re ambitious, but this is only the beginning for Arthur Rigby and the Baskervylles. Given time, a full length record, and maybe some healthy-sized casks of quaffing ale, just imagine what more they might be capable of.
And if you’re going to imagine, you couldn’t find a more joyful collection of songs to start you off.
