As an exclusive to Folk Radio UK One Mile An Hour are giving away ‘Heading The Same Way’ from their new self titled album out October 1st.
As a debut the album is filled with promise drawing wide musical influences from the likes Pentangle, Bonnie Prince Billy, The Grateful Dead, John Martyn, The Band, and CSN&Y. There is an intimacy and warmth to the recording that feels homely, helped by the studio they built to record the album, a space at the top of a house, overlooking the sea on the south coast. This album doesn’t sound like any debut I’ve heard, this is more like a band that’s been clocking up many miles touring and are very comfortable in their sound.
Although the album was mastered by John Dent (John Martyn, Nick Drake, PJ Harvey) the band chose to self-produce the album in order to capture some of the recurring themes that continualy rise to the surface such as nature and outdoors which have been ingrained into the band psyche from their immersion in Scandinavian landscape and literature – the form and structure rather than the content itself. Trouble’s Roots references Tove Jansson’s ‘The Summer Book’, (“In my boat just what I need”) while In Return was influenced by the backdrops of Finnish folk tales.
Vocalist Jeff Kightly carries off all these tales with an easy going falsetto given prominence by under-stated guitar. Together with the bands fluent musicianship I’d swear I was listening to a classic album from the past. A remarkable debut.