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Review: 'Eastern Swell, The'
'One Day, A Flood'   

-  Album: 'One Day, A Flood' -  Label: 'Stereogram Recordings'
-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '16th September 2016'

Our Rating:
It’s usually the lazy journalist, or one who’s not been exposed to a suitably broad range of music, who will remark that a band are ‘difficult to pigeonhole’ or ‘unclassifiable,’ but it’s a fact that The Eastern Swell aren’t all that easy to place. Ostensibly, they’re a folk band, and with narrative lyrics backed by quite conventional folk instrumentation, in the form of bass, drums, guitar and violins. But ‘Rattling Bones’ opens with a rambunctious, Gallon Drunk-esque bassline and kicks into a hefty proggy jam, and also packs in an overtly rock guitar solo, before culminating in a post-rock crescendo.

Elements of classic rock and vintage prog are woven into the fabric of the songs throughout the album, often taking them off on sharp turns at unexpected points. The musicianship is impressive, and things hint toward Jethro Tullish noodlesomeness on ‘Too Little, Too Late’, but the band keep things on the right side of muso indulgence. It helps that the songs are all highly structured and none are overlong. And while it’s often a flaw of albums of a proggy persuasion to abandon hooks and head off on different trajectories, leaving the listener feeling somehow cheated. Sunny pop melts into medieval folk vibes on ‘What’s Done is Done’, before the reflective, introspective and vaguely mournful ‘1000 Yard Stare’ returns to more conventional folk territory.

They’re not averse to playing with convention in the lyrical department, either, using imagery which superficially espouses conventional folk tropes, and then subverting it with a tidy twist (take ‘Sun’s going down / The peat’s blackened my boots / The Irish turf is dark at the roots / and so are you’ from ‘Muckish Mountain’ by way of an example). In combination, their unconventional approach, musical talent and intelligent lyricism make for an interesting and masterful album.

The Eastern Swell Online

  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Eastern Swell, The - One Day, A Flood