James McArthur and the Head Gardeners – Intergalactic Sailor
Moorland Records – 11 October 2019
Formerly Paul Weller’s touring drummer, Welsh-born James McArthur launched his solo career with a debut single in 2012, following up with his first album, Strange Readings From The Weather Station, in 2015 and then Burnt Moth in 2017. That featured a collaboration with bassist Joel Magill from English psych-folk outfit Syd Arthur and the new album sees not only that collaboration continue but adds his guitarist brother Liam to the musical fold. The album was recorded at East Wickham Farm, the childhood home of Kate Bush.
McArthur describes his music as ambient folk, an organic sound built as you would a garden, characterised by his soft, hushed vocals and plucked guitar which, accompanied by Jim Willis on violin and pedal steel guitar from Johnny O, makes for a gentle, intimate and pastoral affair reflecting his connection with the natural world.
Featuring a watery guitar backdrop and pulsing rhythm the whisperingly sung Clearing Up has a somewhat enigmatic lyric though the lines “Cleaning up on the shifting sands/Is to keep or to lose your land/Will I last for a hundred years?/Will I see just one more of those mornings?” would seem to suggest an environmental thread, “Draining the jungle after hearing of the black gold” offering a pointer to the intent.
Again taken at a gentle pace, Tourist Town is slightly less ambiguous, coming across as a tourist guide with a life to colour in for the “families out and picking from the vine” in the winegrowing regions of eastern Sardinia and mainland Italy with their stream of questions about the surroundings.
It’s back to leafy English country lanes for Heavy Sleeper with its circling guitar pattern, brass putting in an appearance towards the end and a feel of awakening to the sun in summer fields.
Though not immediately obvious from the lyrics, underpinned by the bassline, Plane Sailors (premiered on Folk Radio here) was apparently inspired by planes that land on the sea and pick up water to put out forest fires, using one element to combat another, while hoping the winds don’t join forces and blow the flames towards the villages and “that the cool of the sea brings it all down”. It is, says McArthur, “about how communities can help improve the planet, whilst also helping each other.”
Water remains a theme of concern with the fiddle-caressed, fingerpicked Drain The River, an almost madrigal sounding number that speaks of encroachment into natural landscapes as “towns come down from the hillside, cities they will soon be” and “Mines go under the village, mines go under the sea/Mines go into the hillside, drain the river from me”.
Although the meaning of Defending The Fort was lost on me, it makes references to the Dolomites and lines like “Crumbled and derelict formed in the town – there will soon be nothing left there to remind you” would seem to once more touch on endangered nature as it waltzes along with a dreamy haze.
On then to the slightly more instrumentally muscular Wait For The Letter where those early Pink Floyd psych-folk influences are in evidence, stretching out into bluesier realms towards the end. Another number constructed around a circular guitar pattern with a puttering rhythm and prog bass line, Hard Landings pushes just past the five-minute mark riding themes of seeds and lives being blown with the breeze “drifting along other routes”, swirling through the sky and landing to form “life in the cracks its underfoot”.
The most straightforward lyric, enrobed in strings Mountain Rescue sounds a likely personal note with a farewell to one (“walker of the mountains”) who has passed – or at least moved on – as he sings how “there’s still hills we haven’t climbed/No goodbyes – just a world on memories/You still bring a happy smile”.
Sporting bucolic jazz and blues undertones, the title track (a nod perhaps to Tim Buckley’s Starsailor) closes the album, a protest song of sorts about those who exploit financial loopholes (“Place your funds in another place/See if the loophole fits and/Take some time to be covering/Tracks that the dog can’t sniff”) as, unmoored and drifting, he sets out to “Find myself an economy, where my heart ain’t sinking”.
Often sailing a stream of consciousness and impressionistic imagery, Intergalactic Sailor is dreamily ethereal and melodically therapeutic in its calming eddies, it’s well worth booking passage across the cosmic seas.
http://jamesmcarthurmusic.co.uk/