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Review: 'Arch Garrison'
'The Bitter Lay'   

-  Label: 'Believers Roast/Bandcamp'
-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '18.9.20.'

Our Rating:
This is Arch Garrison's third album and as many of you will know they are the other band of North Sea Radio Orchestra main man Craig Fortnum, who are a smaller ensemble than NSRO.

The album opens with Intromission that sounds like it should be the closing song to side one of an LP it's sort of a medieval instrumental wonky folk tune.

Like A Diamond Bright is similarly folksy with a bit of an Incredible String Band feel to it once the vocals come in this is very laid back and the vocals remind me a bit of Gruff Rhys.

Lady Young Ghost has a sea shanty folk song feel. The title track The Bitter Lay has a more modern feel with some interesting synths at the start and a stop start structure that's nicely bucolic and has a wonderfully lazy spaced out feel to the instrumental part that closes the song.

The More I Know sounds like jaunty Elizabethan folk dance music that becomes something else in the middle section like a modernist madrigal before returning to the folk-dance styling.

How Will The Green Things Grow is a very eco friendly look at the need to dig holes and plant seeds and make things grow in a very folksy manner. Cowper's Cross is under half a minute of guitar picking in a sort of Spanish folk style.

Open My Eye is a very gently sung olde English style folk song with some super restrained percussion and minimal adornment.
The Bell Underground does it still ring underground and does it echo more because it's underground even if the percussion sounds more like cymbals and triangles than bells as we search for that Church bell in a cave underground this reminds me of The Incredible String Band crossed with Circulus.

Algae City is sort of a folksy lost city of Atlantis semi submerged verdant soundtrack tour of the bands favorite Algae with classical Spanish guitar leanings.

The Album closes with There's A Well Inside a minstrel style folk song about growing stuff, like the rest of the album is rather beautiful and rather relaxing.

Find out more at https://archgarrison1.bandcamp.com/releases http://www.archgarrison.co.uk/
  author: simonovitch

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