During the recording sessions for ‘Sleeping Operator‘ The Barr Brothers, in their prolific nature, created 40 new tunes.
Now, condensed into thirteen, they have collectively compiled a folk-rock wonder capable of nurturing and nourishing every wound that might scar the surface of our skin.
Meditative, hypnotic, but always unusual thanks to orchestrations conducted to compliment the plethora of other strange instrumentations, it is an album that pulsates with promising and powerful charm throughout, always at home in the seclusion of our own thoughts.
‘Static Orphans’ creates a joyous sense of uplift, featuring a lush harp surely made from an angel’s old pair of wings, something from a distant dreamland where nothing can go wrong. The gentle guitars flutter into the air, overlapping each other, underpinning the next step that pulsates with a fabulous climax unafraid to break obstacles thought of as immovable.
It bleeds into the next track, ‘Love Ain’t Enough’, establishing the album’s musical theme; overwhelming bursts of euphoria, total ecstasy and reflection thanking the small things for staying simple enough to appreciate. The drums waltz along to ethereal backing vocals drenched in reverb but clear enough to understand as meaningful to the highest degree. Bluesy, folksy guitar squeals slide up and down a guitar neck carved from the darkest of woodland resources, before a strangulated fuzz of another guitar seeps into the mixture.
The album never deviates too much from the main pools of inspiration and ideation. The acoustic guitars or lead licks that stream free below every touch of emotive noise offer serenity to the most frustrating of occurrences. ‘Wolves’ is a darker track, but still flies in the wind with the leaves carried away by a summer’s breeze. The campfire will never fade as long as songs like this are played throughout the forest atmosphere; narrative details and dreamlike sequences of peace prevail throughout each tune.
Never do the terms tranquility and peacefulness not aptly apply to the songs. ‘Come In The Water’ grows up with gospel bones, wonderfully unusual and a thrill the more it progresses forward. Playing with silence and noise to catalyse an emotive dynamic, water connoting truce and unity in all it cleanses, but also its ability to be evil; a wonderful metaphor for human fragility under the weight of our confusing conditions.
‘How The Heroine Dies’, firstly, is a fantastic title; dark and original, preparing the pace for a genuinely enthralling story. It’s a track in which the trademark stockpile of instruments from West African points of origin tangle themselves together in a network of calm very little in life could antagonise. More touches of heaven and melody in ‘Valhallas’, which observes from a distance people dancing, smiling the more the guitar arpeggios are dipped in sugary goodness, surrounded by nothing but good news and fond memories.
A shift in tone and texture when ‘Half-Crazy’ enters the equation with its Bigfoot-sized footprint stomping the floor with a pump and pound strengthened by a determination to exist by singing the blues. A riff discovered when digging for crude oil in the guitars quiver, scream and shake, the harmonies soar high above the floors and the bouncing bass in the background of a crowded bar thickens the backbone with mighty posture.
‘England’ inspires images of fields, furnaces and friends as disguises for escape, where rest and relaxation is all we need to recover from the numbness associated with daily life in the city. A staircase of harps climb higher and higher to the top of a mountainside, cinematic and dormant, slowly opening eyes guided by lights only such magic acoustics can compliment.
Overall, the album is a triumph. Never losing sight of the sky, knowing full well it lacks limitations to prevent ambition from growing with each song.
