It’s been a long time since W&H favourites I Concur released their debut album, ‘Able Archer’, which in itself was a long time in coming. After a clutch of cracking singles and establishing themselves as a live act of a rare quality around 2008, they could have banged out the album and capitalised with a swift follow-up. But instead, they held back, and ‘Able Archer’ emerged in the Autumn of 2009. They’re certainly not ones to rush things, and apart from one low-key hometown gig in September 2010 which saw a fair number of new songs aired, they’ve been more or less silent and off the radar until recently.
‘Burial Proof’ is, therefore, a welcome return, and the time they’ve taken over it is more than justified by its quality. It’s an extreme shame, then, that they’ve announced it will be their final release. As with its predecessor, the attention to detail and the overall craftsmanship, not only in the compositions but also the recording is superb. But they’ve not sacrificed an ounce of immediacy or urgency: ‘Burial Proof’ doesn’t feel studio-bound, and the songs have room to breath while simultaneously clobbering you round the cranium.
From the opening salvo of ‘Your Chair’, which weaves delicate guitars over a beefy bass and percussion that builds to explosive proportions in the closing crescendo, to the chiming slow-burner that is ‘Oban & Staffa’ that concludes the album, I Concur juxtapose soft with hard, levity with weight and subtlety with attack.
Some credit must go to James Kenosha for his production work for his sensitivity to the textural qualities of the guitars without detriment to the rocking elements of the sound, much as he did on ‘Able Archer’ and similarly, former Forward Russia front man Tom Woodhead has mastered it nicely, and mastered it loud.
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‘Spiders as Snakes’, ‘All Reds are Low’ and ‘Blast Lung’, premiered at the Leeds Packhorse show in 2010 are all here and are realised brilliantly – crisp, tense and muscular, with nagging guitar motifs and chunky rhythm. ‘Emigré’ is classic Concur, boasting an infectiously melodic (and dare I say it, anthemic) chorus. The soaring guitar on ‘Kelvin’ sounds like ‘Spencer Perceval’ by I Like Trains played at double speed before a dense bass runs in and a widescreen chorus bursts from the speakers.
With ‘Burial Proof’, I Concur have retained all of their distinctive qualities and concentrated on all of the things that made them great in the first place, and at the same time, they’ve evolved and moved their sound on. This means that while it shares substantial commonality with its predecessor, it’s certainly no safe retread. There isn’t a duff or dull track to be found on here (the instrumental ‘Out of View’ makes for a nicely placed post-rock interlude), making ‘Burial Proof’ an album that was well worth the wait.
I Concur Online
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