Pons Aelius – Fire Under The Bridge
Self Released – 1 November 2019
Pons Aelius are a six-piece band that came together whilst studying at Newcastle University. Since then they have spent a lot of time playing and touring and touring and playing and recording an album, Captain Glen’s Comfort, that came out in 2017. Two years later after much more touring, they have now released Fire Under The Bridge.
With what I can see as one exception, all the tunes come from the band, though the opportunities that might be seen for showcasing your own instrument are quickly dispelled as others are brought in. This is truly a band that gels together. As a case in point The Sleeping American starts with a very bluesy/jazzy intro of Callum Younger’s spare drum and Bevan Morris’s double bass on top of which a line of fine guitar from Alasdair Paul runs that eases into the Scots/Irish style that is typical of all these tunes. The tune builds, the rest of the band have their place and the whole goes round until it reaches the bridge into Five Miles To The Mill.
These bridges are an important part of the tunes. How they link from one to the next is clearly something the band takes a lot of time over and it pays off really well. What we don’t get is simply a stop/start link. What we do get is intelligent use made of the rhythms and the changes of time signature or tempo that maybe makes us jump to the next, or maybe feeds us in without really noticing. I can see that this really works in the live performance when the audience have bought into the music and the band can then work them. Listen to From The Nightwalker to The Phantom Jake – the banjo of Tom Kimber, the flute of Sam Partridge and then the Great Highland Bagpipes of Jordan Aikin. The two tunes fit together in a perfect balance and then we get a further bridge to a coda that subtly ties the two tunes together.
The Irish/Scots influence is all over the band’s music, yet it is not locked into any sort of historical reproduction. This is music that takes all the interest and influence of the collective and they do what they want, take it where they want it to go. The broad range of instruments helps, or leads them to this outcome but we hear the way forward in Rafa Benitez Jig, Taklamakan and in the floating air of the flute in Quickly!. Good music has been drawn in, and excellent music pushed out.
For most, being in a band is not a full-time occupation and these chaps have lots going on elsewhere: Tom Kimber and Bevan Morris working together in Assembly Lane; Jordan Aikin pipes all over the place; and Sam Partridge has been appointed as Artistic Director of the National Youth Folk Ensemble, succeeding Sam Sweeney.
And it is very difficult to create that dynamic and zest of the live performance in the studio but Pons Aelius have done it here. This is not music for the staid and the static. The opening set of tunes jump you straight into what Pons Aelius are about and it certainly does seem that they have got that live vibe even in the studio. The whole album is almost relentless in its energy, the energy of youth meeting head-on the clarity and surety of more seasoned players, and here both sides win, as so do we. What is more, and to a great relief for someone close to me, this is joyful music. Even if you (or rather me) just tap your feet, it is an expression of the bounce, the fun in it. You just know that they are having fun making it, and what’s more is that we are having fun listening to it. Lots of talent, lots of dynamism.
Order Fire Under The Bridge via Bandcamp
Live Dates
Oct 31 – The Cumberland Arms, Newcastle Upon Tyne
Nov 01 – Canteen, Bristol
Nov 02 – The Slaughtered Lamb, London
Nov 03 – The Bell, Bath
Nov 04 – Colchester Arts Centre, Colchester
Nov 22 – Coniston Institute, Broughton in Furness
Dec 07 – Scarth Hall, Staindrop, Darlington
https://www.ponsaeliusmusic.com/
Photo Credit: Robert Hughes