SMALL TOWN BOREDOM - Autumn Might Have Hope

It may be a cliché, but the dreary greyness of British provincial towns seems to be an essential ingredient in so much music born from them, to the point that Hood themselves spoke of "small town boredom" as the wellspring of their artistic inspiration and the band's very raison d'être.

The very same definition now defines, starting from its name, a duo from the small Scottish town of Ralston, in Renfrewshire. Whether its use is random or not, this evocative expression is enough to frame the mood of the music of the duo made up of Fraser McGowan and Colin Morrison, who have finally arrived at their album debut after a couple of EPs dating back to 2004-2005.

Composed almost entirely in 2006, but released solely on vinyl this year by the very young and enterprising label Trome, “Autumn Might Have Hope” offers a parade of fourteen sonic vignettes in muted tones, through which the Scottish duo traces their personal take on a subdued singer-songwriter style, built on restrained melodies and bedroom nostalgia.

The delicacy of the arrangements, the simplicity of the guitar chords and the occasional appearance of the piano make it almost inevitable to think of the inextricable and sweetest melancholy of Dakota Suite, and likewise the duo's soft, always extremely restrained vocals, often interwoven to create enchanted melodies, animated by a wide-eyed innocence that at times recalls the softer, more intimate version of Neil Halstead.

Although the musical frame of reference does not stray from melancholic songwriting, Small Town Boredom excel both in the light, disenchanted approach of their lyrics and in sonic solutions that pair bare acoustic notes with a series of homespun field recordings, present beneath the surface of almost every track and surfacing intermittently, often placed at the beginning and end of the songs, almost as a frame for the drowsy melodies and muffled whispers of the many torch songs in lo-fi enclosed in this work.

From its very beginning, “Autumn Might Have Hope” wraps the listener in an embrace of evanescent apathy, leading into a dream told in hushed tones and destined to remain one, as the constant sense of absence and incompleteness in the lyrics suggests, perfectly completed by a guitar picking of lazy grace and nocturnal harmonies, yet capable of gently dissolving any risk of excessive oppression. Even when the Scottish duo sings of distant memories and romantic loneliness, the tone remains light, in the most classic tradition of British singer-songwriter pop, conveying a sadness to be savoured almost voluptuously, something only a few greats manage to express (beyond the aforementioned Dakota Suite, one might also think of Barzin and the Montgolfier Brothers).

The same goes for the sonic context, centred on suspended notes and the repetition of dry rhythms, further enriched by faint electric jolts that set emotional twists of bitter sweetness, blending acoustic slowness, lo-fi melodic lightness and rougher passages, in a style halfway between Boduf Songs and Rivulets. But, compared to these artists, there is here the quintessentially British attitude to pop and an eternal adolescent spirit, which make “Autumn Might Have Hope” a hidden gem dense with emotional authenticity, far from depressive even in its most intense songs, such as “The Great Lodging” and “Monday Night H.O.P.E. Group”, discreetly placed on the ridge between hope and disillusionment, in an autumn of the soul that has never been so gentle and comforting.

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12/05/2008