Album Review: Beach Comber – Parting Cuts


Parting Cuts




Whatever’s happening in the world, good news – and good times – are still where you find them.

Beach Comber (aka Rory Friers) usually makes noise as part of the Irish post-rockers And So I Watch You From Afar, but for the occasion of his sister’s wedding he decided to give the couple something different in the guise of music he’d recorded in solitude whilst staying at a remote house on the coast.

Over the course of a two week period, what took shape wasn’t just a dozen reworkings of My Way, but inspiration came instead in the shape of stories, each chapter marking the ups and downs experienced by the couple as they spent the year before their big day travelling, a period in which their past, present and future was irrevocably shaped.

Initially, this gift was a gesture meant to be cherished in private, but after contemplation the guitarist then decided that the project was something which, if more publicly embraced, could give a sense of hope to others whilst so many were stuck in a disorientating lockdown rut.

Circumstances meant that the compositional tools were limited to a laptop, guitar and not much else, but the results are pleasingly substantial and much more euphoric than those ingredients would suggest. Sequencing means that the titular opening track and closer The Next Adventure Has Its Start, both plaintive chants which eventually flourish into uplifting wedding marches, form a start and end to a welcoming, heartfelt narrative arc.

Friers’ voice is slight and not unlike that of Justin Vernon, but Two Set Sail rocks at the pace of a journey beginning’s adrenalin rush, skimming madly with the wind in its face, the sort of exuberant tempo familiar to big circle folk the world over.

As all wedding crashers know, dancing at someone else’s party is fine, but Parting Cuts also showcases the Irishman’s versatility, drawing on his experience as a composer as well as a musician. These subtle traceries and knots are often not immediate, but become most obvious on the sublime, beach-side melodies of Kickin Back In Saquarema and South Pacific’s beatific, cascading guitar picks.

The peak unconfined joy is saved for Two Come Home (‘Oh, it’s good to be here/with all we love and more/And the world is so amazing/It’s just outside our door), while the most affecting nugget by far is Two Do Battle With The Mountain (So On You Go), which begins with some swirly keyboards, strikes up an urgent, box-slapping guitar strum, then reels a jig happy enough to be danced to underneath any sea and sky.



Some people get a set of saucepans as a wedding gift. Some get an album. Everyone gets a chance at happiness, and Parting Cuts is both poet and poem, bard, and pipes.

It’s rare that a stranger’s postcards sound so uplifting, but now everyone gets to toast the bride and groom.

7.5/10

Andy Peterson


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