This album makes me think of Mi And L'Au whose sparse and simple acoustic songs have a similar cloying sweetness about them. Both are male-female duos who choose to cut themselves off from the world to make their music in log cabins. Instead of the woods of Finland, Tom and Anna Smith (brother and sister/ man and wife?) retreated to 'The Field' just outside Middlesbrough surrounded by the North Yorkshire Moors.
They describe the album as a "labour of love" and while it is clearly made in a joyful frame of mind, the affirmative quality is also tinged with melancholy. The closing song (Seal Sands) reflects on an "impending doom even in the happiest time" while Dust Of Life and God both seem preoccupied by the transience of life ("The winter's coming to blow the dust of life").
More upbeat tunes are the bouncy campfire sing-along of Field Song and a slightly twee song of childhood memories, Rocking Horse.
These Smiths are obviously influenced by the rolling landscape and the English climate. The lyrics peppered with references to climatic conditions. This is especially explicit on Sunny Morning and on the best track , Treecreeper ("will the sunshine takes the clouds away.......will the rain wash the pain away") . The latter is an ambitious song that evocatively weaves together headlines about a missing girl with word pictures of the small woodland bird that gives the track its title.
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Tom and Anna share the vocals throughout and on Paint The World in particular show off some nice harmonies. They have no real need of a full backing band but do use two additional musicians to flesh out the sound a little. Emily Smith (related?) plays cello on Treecreeper and Cave Song while Holly Cassidy plays flute on Sunny Morning.
The cut price production gives the album a lo-fi quality but the warmth of the music still shines through. This is a short but sweet selection of eight songs (plus one hidden track) which is worth half an hour of anybody's time.
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