When completing his recent album 'Towards the Dark', Alexi Murdoch called upon the assistance of Beirut and The National to put the finishing touches on his delicate folk songs. It’s hard to spot where they are on 'Some Day Soon.'
As the first taster of a new record from an artist who was handpicked by Sam Mendes to soundtrack the film Away We Go and has even featured on The OC, I was expecting a call to arms vividly announcing Murdoch’s return. Instead we get one of the most delicate and poignant songs I’ve heard in a long time. It would be an insult to label the stripped back arrangement as charming, in truth, it’s just brilliant.
Some Day Soon starts with a warm guitar picking the repeated pattern lifted from Led Zeppelin’s Going To California. As Murdoch’s voice enters with a lushness that almost sounds as if he’s humming against himself, the simplicity and pureness is breathtaking. Effortless lyrics are repeated against this back drop (“I love my father and I love him well”, “Where I live it gets dark at night”), with banjos and pianos being added gently into the arrangement. The song resists the temptation to become overblown however; instead these touches are absorbed into the music with all the delicacy of those first few waking moments where you try to ease back into a fading dream.
|
After assessing his lot in life, we get an absorbing pay off in the line “I love her face another day and I hope that kindness comes your way”. It’s engaging yet vague enough to read into it any interpretation of the previous two and a half minutes. Just as the arrangement becomes slightly looser, the song ends, not in a flourish but with a tender sigh that will have you creeping yourself back in to the tracks opening bars.
Alexi Murdoch online
|
