Pavey Ark – Close Your Eyes And Think Of Nothing
Self Released – 20 March 2020
Pavey Ark set themselves up as a simple folk band, then pull the rug out from under you. Their brand of music features a remarkable level of creativity, incorporating everything from horns and strings to phased vocals. This is abundantly clear on their debut album, Close Your Eyes And Think Of Nothing, where songs take on new dimensions to fit the changing needs of the song.
Lead singer and guitarist Neil Thomas, was previously a solo artist, opening for the likes of Steve Mason and This Is The Kit back in 2016. Shortly thereafter, Thomas formed Pavey Ark with John Hamilton on bass, Sam Handley playing drums, and Chris Heron filling the violin chair. In short order, they were performing summer festivals like Glastonbury, Cornbury, and the 2019 edition of Bearded Theory where they were hailed as one of the highlights of the festival. All before they had released their first album.
Close Your Eyes And Think Of Nothing rectifies that situation. The first notes of guitar on Wallflower set up the assumption that this is merely a folk album, yet the strings that come in as Thomas begins to sing, start to tell a different story. By the time the treated vocals appear labels of any kind seem perhaps a wee bit off the mark. Suffice it to say, this is music that defies simple categorization.
Visions of Roddy Frame and Aztec Camera circa High Land, Hard Rain come to mind as Cuckoo opens. Despite the fact that the song came to Thomas in a dream shortly after the inauguration of his Trump-ness, it offers a wonderful chorus, “They say we’re cuckoos, they do. We live in cuckoo, me and you. We live in cuckoo, glad to.” Violins and horns add to the upbeat feel of the track before it shifts into a slow-motion mediation, “yeh we’re all just waiting in line, yeh we’re all just playing for time.”
Strings come to the fore on Close Your Eyes And Think Of Nothing shifting to visions of Van Morrison, not so much vocally but musically, especially the strings. Yet in a sense all the comparisons are useless. Pavey Ark’s music hews to its own track in a sense creating a new language out of the music it has gleaned from other sources.
The fragility of the opening guitar on Jenny Let Go is quickly replaced with something more solid, bouncy, and banjo-y. Yet the lyrics hint at something much darker. Consider Your Hand closes things out with a growing swell of guitar and violin before fading away to nothing.
Belying notions of a young, immature band, Pavey Ark has brought forth an album that tugs at the emotions with joy and sorrow in equal measure. Close Your Eyes And Think Of Nothing is, in a sense, a call to arms from a band that demands to be heard. It is a perfect antidote for these uncertain days.
Order via Bandcamp: https://paveyark.bandcamp.com/album/close-your-eyes-and-think-of-nothing