Reviews
Artist:Faeland Album: When I Close My Eyes
Label: Green Sage
Tracks: 12
Website: https://www.faeland.co.uk
The second album by West Country duo Rebecca Nelson and Jacob Morrison charts timely themes of overcoming adversity and connecting with the natural world, their sound again an airy melding of the otherworldly and the everyday finely captured in Nelson's light, gliding vocals and Morrison's guitar work.
It opens with fluttering recent single 'Easier', its nature imagery setting feelings of being lost with conviction that a way will be found ("Feeling so far from home/The creatures they tell me/We'll untangle roots and reeds"), shifting to the slightly jazzier strum of 'Was' with Harry Sutton on double bass and Morrison's guitar which speaks of transition and the shifting ebb and flow of time ("I was a hunter brandishing a gun/I was the hunted my family's blood did run") but underpinned by the certainty that "The spring turns to winter turns to winter/Turns to spring" and "the song goes on".
The gentle delicate sway of the ethereal 'Little Lights' is all about the love and support of friends ("We tried to sing you a happy song/To get you through/Made us all count our blessings/There's one for every star in the sky/And for everything that went wrong today/There's a hundred million more little lights"), followed by violin-caressed 'End of the Day', the track featured in the film 23 Walks and reflecting its celebration of the beauty in the seemingly mundane moments of everyday life, or, as Nelson puts it "how something so simple/Can be all that it takes".
Accompanied by on piano and again lightly veined with jazz and blues colours, 'Long Lost' keeps the mood calm as, in a song of reaching out and reconciliation, Nelson's voice rises to the high notes as she asks "Are we too estranged/To cross the distance?", the lyric making a direct reference to the pandemic in "When I first wrote this song/None of this had begun/It was all blankets, chocolates, festival skies/Suddenly a change".
Spanish guitar marks the half-way point introing the traditional minstrel feel of the melancholic 'Ocean Song', rumbling drums underscoring the darkening mood conjured in lines like "among these loads I've a burden/Of this unrequited dream/But by sunrise all my wrongs will be right/Sunken in the sea/For I'll send this heart to the ocean/To wash upon an unnamed shore …I'll know him no more", pizzicato and sweeping violin adding dramatic power.
Again with plucked strings adding to the acoustic strum, 'Used To' is a musically softer track, but it masks another downbeat lyric about betrayal and abandonment ("I used to think your love could save me/But you said goodbye/Said you'd destroy me"), the mood not entirely lifting for the questioning 'What Will I Be?' ("What's it going to take/For them to grieve and kneel?") sung unaccompanied other than for a simple hand percussion beat and muted strings, evoking the feel of a ballad from some Elizabethan melancholic comedy.
However, the light shines again with 'Willow', another on which the opening has Nelson's hesitant, measured vocals exposed and unadorned before the guitar and a more confident tone sets in with its theme of rebirth, reawakening and the power of music ("There's a song/From the rocks and earth we dwell upon/Rarely spoken yet it's written on/Each and every face you'll ever see…Waiting always to be found again…If you said it's gone/I'd say that you were wrong…You could find it in the willow/You could find it out to sea/You could hear it in the hollow/Of any dark forgotten tree").
Another meditative piano ballad, 'Made To Love You' speaks of unconditional hearts ("I don't expect you to change/I don't expect the stars to rearrange/And I've got nothing to gain") and of fortitude under duress ("I don't believe there's only so much we can take"), heading to a close with, first the lightly fingerpicked blues and double bass of 'Tin Pan Pocket' ("Hello my own blood and bone/Can you hear me now I'm miles away") that had be thinking of a late night Rickie Lee Jones. Finally, comes the minimal, delicate arrangement of the traditional hues of 'To The Ones I Know And Love' a benediction and prayer ("When you find yourself in black/Hear the voice that brings you back… May our troubles pass you by/To the ones I cannot see… Protect hold and comfort me/Until we meet again one day") that perfectly encapsulates the magical and otherworldly connotations of their name. Close your eyes and let it wash through your soul.
Mike Davies
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