Quin with One N – Out Of The Blue
Self Released – Out Now
Like any band or musician gearing up to release a new album with any kind of fanfare in 2020, for young Quin Etheridge-Pedden – now operating under the moniker Quin with One N – with this godforsaken virus situation things obviously could not go as hoped or envisaged. The best-laid plans o’ mice an’ men, and all that, but considering that this super-talented young fellow comes over as pragmatic and unflappable, he made the most of the crazy situation in launching his second full-length release, Out of the Blue, with an audience-less livestream at the Duncan Showroom on Vancouver Island, on May 1st, which just happened to be his 18th birthday.
Regardless of his youth, as this first collection of entirely original material emphatically illustrates, in terms of musicianship and compositional prowess this cool-headed prodigy is maturing at an astonishing pace, and not for nothing was he recently accepted into Berklee College of Music. Following his 2018 debut, on this second album Etheridge-Pedden was keen to display his capabilities not only as a competent writer but, alongside his skills on the fiddola, also his chops on acoustic guitar, so it’s on six strings that the Davy Graham-esque title track opens the album. Like the whole record, it’s an instrumental, and in keeping with the rest of the material on this lovely album, it’s of a Celtic bent at heart. That said, certain tracks – particularly Phthalo Me and The Grass is Always Bluer – bear a distinct jazz inflection, a feature and quality expressed in the music of one of this young man’s notable influences, the late Oliver Schroer.
With titles like In the Deep Blue C, How Synesthetes See Cyan, Gliding Through Glaucous and even esreveR eulB, this collection presents meditations on shades of blue, obviously a dominant colour from nature in the Pacific Northwest. Designed by a young Nanaimo artist named Kylee Bowman – whose online portfolio contains a piece entitled simply Blue – the CD is housed in a package of various shades of the colour in question.
Quin with One N is accompanied on his new offering by a potent combination of precocious youth and seasoned experience, which is certainly reflected in both its freshness and sophistication. Of the latter camp, ex of West My Friend and something of a mentor for his young friend, Victoria singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nick Mintenko contributes bass on four tracks, while fellow guiding presence Geoff Horrocks, a director of the traditional fiddle music ensemble Fiddelium, pops up on piano on two cuts. A beautiful wordless vocalization recalling the great Mary Margaret O’Hara lights up Gliding Through Glaucous, contributed courtesy of the Victoria-based Fado specialist, Sara Marreiros, and of the former camp teenage rock drummer Sara Varro offers her sticks to two tracks here.
Make no mistake, possessing what appears to be an uncanny innate ability, and with two fine albums under his belt before he’s even entered his third decade, Quin with One N is set to enjoy a long and very bright musical future. I can only hope that the launch party for his next release is in considerably less surreal and soulless circumstances, but if not he’ll undoubtedly just shrug and take it in his stride.
WEBSITE: http://quinwithonen.com/
BANDCAMP: https://quinwithonen.bandcamp.com/album/out-of-the-blue