No-one these days seems to own a calendar. And with a name roughly translated from the German expression for wanderlust, once you’ve heard The Fernweh’s music it’s impossible to think of a more fitting condition for the core trio of Jamie Backhouse, Ned Crowther and Austin Murphy than having a deeply abstract relationship with time, maker of progress and creator of the dead hand of intent.
The three met more than a decade ago whilst working with the should’ve-been-but-never-was Candie Payne and then jobbed for, amongst others, The Zutons and Edgar Jones.
But The Fernweh weren’t to become a realised thing until about four years ago (the specifics, as ever, are vague) after writing and recording sessions in Liverpool and the Yorkshire seaside hamlet of Robin Hood’s Bay convinced everyone concerned that the output was more than hobbyist jamming.
Centred around the notion of a reborn Fairport Convention, in the flesh their heady blend of modernist consciousness with arcane musical notions of the island’s past slips its moorings more than once, but there is much more substance to it than faeries and Poor Sally Sits A-Weeping.
This a quiet odyssey they claim that is, at its simplest, an ‘exploration of Englishness through folk and rock and roll’ (as if this was something with easy boundaries), their starting point is the electrified legacy of Bert Jansch. Amongst the rich evocations and portraits there are those who are haunted – such as the old man adorned by the ashes of colonialism on Hand Me Down, or a whisper found in the scattered instrumental snippets of Afternoon Nap and the psychedelic tufts of Winterlude.
Like many men of their generation, Backhouse, Crowther and Murphy are also seeking to find a place amongst a maelstrom of constrained identities conferred upon them; it’s hard to decide whether the villain of Kinksian-romp Is This Man Bothering You is a stranger or just a face staring back from the mirror. The reverse characterisation applies to the wonderfully mercurial Next Time Around, a tale of hope and daydreams thrown into sunshine by guest vocalist Alessi Laurent-Marke, the projection of self outward into fantasy made by hand-me-down melodies borrowed from lucid inspirations The Beatles in their multi-hued pomp.
The devil equally is never far from Albion’s story. So to play his advocate: if ancient is the new new, is this just Britain navigated from icon to cherished icon, a two dimensional gap year project for bored seekers? The answer is no, if only because the echoes reach back far deeper than the ubiquity of the sixties’ tacky disposability.
On the chillier One Hundred Flowers Bloom, the harvest is waiting to be pulled in under moonlight whilst the surf organ peal of Leaf Didn’t Move and its lyrics about chasing sunsets are very possibly a nod to the ways in which Britain has invaded over centuries other people’s lands and imaginations as they also have done the same to theirs.
And from this vantage point – the lighthouse, the windmill, the window of a jet – there really is no need for calendars, as even the idea of partitioning what we do reveals itself as trivial. The Fernweh have drunk deep from a well of unconditioned history and have made a record which reflects that single, rolling experience.
In doing so, they reaffirm that sometimes wanting for nothing can feel like everything.
