Lanterns On The Lake- Gracious Tides, Take Me Home

This Newcastle sextet have been labelled the anti Geordie shore. An unusual, but spot on comparison. Lanterns on the Lake deal in the slow, the ponderous and the deep. And are just about as unlikely candidates for getting on a plane to Magaluf to get 'mortal', as it is possible to conceive. If any intoxication were likely to occur it would almost certainly be taking place from within the confines of a bedroom. Swigs taken whilst staring into the bleak Northumberland mist and squall.
     "I dreamt of awful things, like company, and physical interaction", so goes the opening verse of 'If I've Been Unkind'. The unspecified "interaction" is uttered with all the lust of a surgeon about to dissect a cadaver. So, yeah, party poopers, perhaps. And candidates for the next series of Geordie Shore, definitely not (I promise not to mention that again!). Though contenders for the most beautiful British record released this year; they undoubtedly are.
            Combining the miserablism of Arab Strap, with some of Sigur Ros' icy, orchestral pomp, they make atmospheric, lugubrious electro-folk. Gracious Tides, Take Me Home, is their debut long player, released via Bella Union. This album has made a timely arrival, both in the seasonal sense- as the nights draw in- and in the larger Indie sphere, coming as it does, just after the storming success of Bon Iver's most recent, unequivocally introverted, album.This is the kind of music for open fires and long solitary autumnal walks. It's also dangerous to write about- causing overused adjectives, such as shimmering, ethereal, and desolate to spring, all to readily, to mind. Anyway, you get the idea.
     This album, as I already intimated, finds a home in the roiling turbulence of emotion and heartbreak, for which the sea becomes a repeated metaphor. Whether alluded to directly - "I sailed the sea, you were never even there" (If I've Been Unkind), or indirectly, as during the subtle hiss of static on the gently experimental, 'The Places We Call Home'. The sea is an omnipresent, with countess lyrical allusions. The music has a balming effect on the senses, as if the much mentioned water and rain not only symbolises sorrow, but also somehow soothes an aching mind. Washes it clean.
        This effect is aided through a pleasingly liberal use of strings, repeated piano themes, and reverb, splashing over all each song's acoustic core. It's at moments when the arrangements are most expansive that Gracious Tides..is at its most rewarding. When they recall the spacey languor of Spiritualised, rather than a conventional folk outfit. The opener, 'Lungs Quicken' assumes an elegant poise redolent of trip hoppers Portishead, or even Cocteau Twins, as breathy vocals and the pulse of the drum machine combine to simulate the quickening the song's title describes.
            The album deals in familiar melodramatic motifs and signifiers, such as home, travelling, the elements, and distance. And this reminds me of fellow northern melancholics, Elbow, whose "Station Approach" is the apotheosis of this kind of unashamedly 'epic' song. Something about the repetitive nature of many of the tracks also reminds me of Engineers, the oft overlooked British reverie makers.
        For all this maritime desolation (damn, I said it!), the album could get a bit oppressive if taken in large doses. But there is enough going on sonically to feed the ears despite the relentlessly maudlin tone, and indeed, the songs are so beautiful that issues of tone are quibbles.
              Catch a ship into the murky waters of the unknown, or, if feeling less adventurous, just give this album a whirl.