Gravenhurst - The Inner Journeys of Nick Talbot

Thinking of Bristol's music, the first thing that comes to mind is the trip-hop of Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack, an unmistakable blend of soul, hip-hop and club-ready electronic rhythms. But this south-west English city also gave birth to another fascinating movement in the late '90s: the new space psychedelia of acts like Flying Saucer Attack, Third Eye Foundation and Crescent.

It's against this musical backdrop that the talented multi-instrumentalist Nick Talbot took his first steps, lending his skills as a guitarist to a handful of short-lived bands.

His chance to debut as a solo artist coincided with the founding of Silent Age Records, a small label Talbot set up with his friend Guy Bartell of Bronnt Industries Kapital: the label's first release was in fact Internal Travels, a none-too-original album of folk singer-songwriter fare. Intricate, relentless fingerpicking underpins every song, with lyrics delivered over it in a light, delicate voice. The arrangements are deliberately stripped down, the tracks tend to blur together, and the abundance of arpeggios can't make up for a lack of fresh ideas. The only songs that really stand out are the ambient interlude "The Silent Age" and the wistful ballad "The High Seas", enriched by distant echoes in the background.

The following year, again on the Silent Age imprint, came Flashlight Seasons, which was effectively a fresh start. From the cover art alone, clearly echoing "The White Birch" by Codeine, it's a statement of intent: the guitars slowly grow more rarefied, giving way to ethereal pads ("Tunnels") or unsettling glockenspiel counterpoints ("Bluebeard"); while the bucolic, Fairport Convention-style folk of "Damage II" and the instrumental space-rock of "East Of The City" reveal Talbot's varied musical roots, what really stands out are the tragic, desperate ballads like "Fog Round The Figurehead" and "I Turn My Face To The Forest Floor", enriched by refined vocal harmonies that owe a heavy debt to Simon & Garfunkel. The album immediately caught the attention of Warp Records, which reissued and distributed it worldwide, making Talbot the new great hope of English ethereal folk.

In 2004 Warp released a lengthy EP titled Black Holes In The Sand, with which the Gravenhurst project reached full maturity. Talbot intones cryptic lyrics centred on murders and farewells, accompanying himself with intense, clean fingerpicking. Compared to his earlier work, here it's the atmosphere that makes the difference: the title track is an acoustic nightmare steeped in distortion, hazy drones and dissonant guitars, while "Still Water" initially seems like an innocent Paul Simon-style lullaby before quickly morphing into a Codeine-esque march with stretched-out overdrive and hypnotic harpsichord. Yet the moment of greatest pathos comes with the minimal "Diane", a story of rape rendered even more terrifying than the Hüsker Dü original. With Black Holes In The Sand, Talbot seems to earn a place among the great ephemeral folksingers, retracing a path that, a decade earlier on the other side of the Atlantic, had been walked by bands like Cowboy Junkies, American Music Club and Red House Painters.

Instead, a few months later the Englishman shook things up, set aside the acoustic guitar, and released the masterpiece Fires In Distant Buildings, as unexpected as it was astonishing.

The Slint-esque post-rock of "Down River", first languid then explosive, the driving, Peter Hook-style bassline of "Velvet Cell", the big electric ballad "Animals" built up into a wall of shoegaze — everything here contributes to a dark, decadent atmosphere, giving Gravenhurst's music an intense goth scent. The hippie folk of "Cities Beneath The Sea" is the only clear link to the past: aside from that, the tear-jerking arpeggios of the poignant "Nicole" and the cover of the Kinks' "See My Friend", steeped in chemical psychedelia, help plunge the listener into a hypnotic darkness that very few albums of the new millennium have managed to achieve. Special mention goes to the ten minutes of "Song From Under The Arches", one of the finest slowcore statements in history, and probably the best thing Talbot's mind ever produced.

The follow-up, The Western Lands, is the ideal album for anyone wanting to start exploring Gravenhurst. On one hand, Talbot seems to want to tie together everything he'd done over the previous five years, pairing canonical post-rock ("Grand Union Canal") with electro-acoustic arpeggios ("The Collector", "Saints"). On the other, he saturates his guitar sound in homage to Kevin Shields ("Hollow Man", "The Western Lands") and plays Fairport Convention as if it were Flying Saucer Attack ("Farewell, Farewell"). Yet the songwriter is once again at his best on the more rarefied tracks, like the evocative mantra of "Song Among The Pine" and the melancholic "Hourglass", where sad, stretched-out textures blend perfectly with a pop aftertaste. Despite a certain unevenness, The Western Lands is a well-crafted album, whose circular melodies can't help but recall bands like the Pale Saints, and their unrepeatable ability to combine the delicacy of evanescent atmospheres with tempered, abrasive sonic contexts.

The fifth effort from Bristol's little genius took five years to arrive. Such a long wait led many to wonder what sort of new direction Gravenhurst's sound might take. Instead, The Ghost In Daylight is, to all intents and purposes, a step backwards (though not a misstep). The opening "Circadian" boasts an acoustic riff repeated in time with a brushed ride cymbal, and makes it immediately clear that Talbot wants to lead the listener back into the ethereal atmospheres of his early work: "In Miniature" is a sort of "Scarborough Fair" steeped in new-millennium disenchantment, while the unsettling "The Foundry" is the ideal continuation of Black Holes In The Sand, with ambient drones clouding the clean acoustic guitar sound. The psychedelic "Islands" breaks up the album, with Talbot briefly venturing into trip-hop territory, while the six minutes of the single "The Prize" neatly sum up Gravenhurst's various sides (minimal folksinger, but also intense post-rocker).

The Ghost In Daylight confirms that Nick Talbot always manages to be interesting and poetic, even on his least surprising album.

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