Vancouver singer/ songwriter FARRELL SPENCE’S debut LP ‘A Town Called Hell’ was a beguiling affair. Full of sparse, haunting melancholia and occasionally redolent of her Canadian compatriots The Cowboy Junkies, its’ most memorable songs (‘A Murder of Crows’, the nomadic title track) were often steeped in restlessness and a yearning to jump on a boxcar and see where her muse took her.
In the aftermath of the album’s release, Farrell’s muse took her to Europe or, more specifically, Ireland and Italy. Good for this writer on the first count as he got to see her play on his home patch of West Cork and good for the artist on the second as Italy provided the backdrop for recording the songs on this long-awaited sophomore LP ‘Song for the Sea.’
When I tell you the songs peopling this album were mostly recorded in a hotel room in Rome, you might think of a tense, Robert Johnson-style scenario, with the artist facing the wall and singing songs of impending doom while unable to face the engineer. However, the graceful ‘Song for the Sea’ had anything but such a nightmarish birth. Recorded primarily on a portable recording console and built up around Spence and collaborator Francesco Forni’s inter-weaving acoustic guitars and Spence’s close-miked vocals, it’s a record full of warmth, grace and intimacy.
While ‘Song for the Sea’ may have been recorded in Rome, Farrell’s Irish sojourn also heavily informs some of the album’s most notable outings. Following on from the scene setting ‘Intro’ with its’ rippling waves and distant foghorn, the delicate title track follows on and suggests her wanderlust (“this is a song for the rambler who chases the sun...a song for the dreamer who shoots at the moon”) remains an intrinsic part of her DNA. ‘Tian Put the Tay On’ and ‘You Can Sleep on My Floor’ I remember from her live set and they’re both infused with warmth, reflection and just a little temptation. The brittle finger-picking on the former is especially attractive, while ‘You Can Sleep...’ has some lovely sonic touches (pedal steel, trembling piano) and even a whistling solo.
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As with ‘A Town Called Hell’, the originals are interspersed with some choice covers. Her debut took in Mary Gauthier and Bukka White, but ‘Song for the Sea’ finds Farrell bringing an intriguing sexual role reversal to Nick Lowe’s ‘The Beast In Me’ and a nonchalant stroll through a tune called ‘Good Morning Bird’, originally penned and recorded by Farrell’s mom, Barbara Spence, herself a renowned Canadian folk singer.
Good though these are, they’re arguably bettered by Farrell’s version of the old trad.arr tune ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ which she casts in a suitably mournful light with Simon Kendall’s droning accordion providing an eerie, persistent threat. As the album heads for the finish line, she also treats us to a striking, acapella reading of ‘I Will Never Marry’ (which reminds me of Sandy Denny’s ‘Quiet Joys of Brotherhood’) and finishes up with – what else - a ukelele-driven country-blues called ‘Going Down the Riverside’. It’s an absolute charmer and just possibly this writer’s favourite track here.
So, while I’ve no doubt that ‘Song for the Sea’ took a whole lotta blood, sweat and toil to write and piece together, it swings by in a life-affirming breeze. It is an absolute credit to its’ author’s restless heart, so we can only hope she continues to roam. Or head back to Rome, if it brings us another album this glorious.
Farrell Spence online
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