It’s a little over two years since I gave Leeds-based seven-piece Tomorrow We Sail an 8/10 for their delicate and ambitious ‘White Rose’ single. Since then, they’ve followed it up with another singe, ‘For Rosa’, played a fair few live dates and knuckled down to the task of committing their debut album to tape.
From the outset, the opening bars of ‘The Well & The Tide’, it’s evident they’ve paid close attention to detail. Against a soft piano and strings that hang like vapour trails, Tim Hay’s baritone vocal is intimate. As the song surges and swells to its mid-point crescendo, his voice lifts, brimming with emotion, accompanied by a chorus courtesy of the rest of the band and rising instrumentation, the effect is beautifully dramatic. The production is such that it feels as though you’re in the room with them, and they’re playing just for you.
The ‘landscape of billowing, reverb-soaked guitars, orchestral strings, piano, organ and multi-layered group-harmony vocals’ referred to in the press release aren’t only delivered, but to powerful effect. The timing of each build-up and uplift is perfect and incredibly moving and this is nowhere more clearly evidenced on the 10-minute ‘Eventide’ or the soaring ‘Never Goodbye’, which marks the start of a trilogy of thematically-linked songs that occupy the album’s mid-section. ‘December,’ meanwhile, is reminiscent of ‘Heritage’-era Her Name is Calla (another Gizeh release, no less) as it bursts into life with a crashing drum and crackling guitar.
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While at their hearts the songs are sparse, simple post-rock / folk pieces, there’s a complexity and nuance to the layered arrangements, bordering on classical that elevates the seven pieces on ‘For Those Who Caught the Sun in Flight’ above genre. For those familiar with the Gizeh roster, comparisons to Glissando may be of value, at least in terms of indicating the moving qualities of their delicate music.
The two singles close the album in succession, the 13-minute ‘For Rosa’ epitomising Tomorrow We Sail’s sense of grandeur and poise, sitting somewhere between Her Name Is Calla’s ‘Condor and River’ and the vast instrumental sections on Fields of the Nephilim’s ‘Elizium’ with the addition of tremulously dramatic vocals.
Touching the depths of the soul, they sing of transience, human failings and frailty, and of the lost generation after WW1, inspired by Vera Brittain’s autobiography ‘Testament Of Youth’. It may not be upbeat, and certainly isn’t uptempo, but it is gloriously uplifting and magnificently accomplished.
Tomorrow We Sail Online
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