As the cold winter months approach, the timing of Rob St John's long-awaited debut album couldn't be better. Its dark, introspective inclinations seems perfectly in tune with the season.
St John's roots lie in Lancashire and he currently lives in Oxford, but most of the album was recorded over two days in a Victorian house in Edinburgh with Neil Pennycock of Scottish indie-folk band Meursault.
The physical version of the LP comes on 12" vinyl with a gatefold sleeve, deliberately harking back to a pre-digital age and its title also takes us into the past. Weald derives from the Old-English 'wald' and refers to a once-forested area in south-east England. As a wild, wooded and even dangerous place, 'weald' is a reflection of Rob St John's love of the British landscape and in keeping with the bleak yet beautiful tone of this album.
It opens with the sombre Your Phantom Limb, which was also released as one side of a split 7" single and reviewed elsewhere on Whisperin' & Hollerin'.
This song prepares the listener for an album's worth of quiet, introspective folk but the next track (Sargasso Sea) shifts to a more electric, full band sound complete with male choral harmonies. It ends with a powerful one minute drum and guitar jam that, rather disappointingly, fades just as the band seem to be warming to the task.
On Vanishing Points, Louise Martin's haunting musical saw provides a perfect counterpoint to St John's dreamy and detached vocals. One line begins: "when I was a younger man, I had these fears" which makes him sound far older and more world weary than a twenty-something ought to.
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Next up is Acid Test, which is a song that appeared on his Tipping In Ep. The version here is much slower and more forlorn as he reflects of the impossibility of change and dwells upon "darkened rooms and deserted villages".
It's something of a relief that the next two tracks return to a more widescreen sound with a prominent Dirty Three-like violin and drum backing from Malcolm Benzie and Owen Williams respectively.
Stainforth Force is named after a series of waterfalls on the Lancashire /Yorkshire border. It is the longest track and the slow building tension of the song also makes it the album's dramatic centrepiece.
Domino is another track that started life as a gentle acoustic ballad, but with the band treatment it becomes more menacing and vengeful ("I will not sleep in this old bed").
The final two tracks are a Bert Jansch style acoustic instrumental (Emma's Dance) and another fragile, haunted ballad (An Empty Dance)
Weald's eight tracks may be inspired by the physical landscape but, paradoxically, its emotional intensity and desolate mood makes it a perfect soundtrack to wintry nights spent indoors.
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