IAN WILLIAM CRAIG - Slow Vessels

Beneath the layers of dust and the dull glimmers of Ian William Craig's last record, it wasn't hard to spot a singer-songwriter genesis at its core: most of the tracks on "Centres" were the result of an evident stretching-out of material closer to traditional song form than to ambient aesthetics, subsequently put through analog processes designed to heighten the recording's imperfections, its grain comparable to the fleeting sketches of Benoît Pioulard.

But the deep intimacy of those "hidden" songs was crying out to resurface: the extended play "Slow Vessels" fills the gap left (almost painfully) between those grooves, returning six key tracks to their acoustic roots for voice and guitar or piano.

The previously unheard falsetto on "Arrive, Arrive" is a gut punch, throwing Craig's excellent vocal abilities - honed in part through choral training - into even sharper relief, while the reverb-soaked polyphony of "Purpose" is transformed into an essential, more brisk folk arpeggio. The piano on the moving "The Nearness" intones a solitary melody like the tail end of a dance party, after the lovers have gone home and all that's left on the floor are broken glass and torn decorations.

But it's "Contain", here in its third version, that reaffirms itself as his little songwriting masterpiece, and perhaps the only one capable of unleashing the full range of his vocalizations, sealed off here by a handful of piano chords in place of the diaphanous synth that appeared in the "Astoria Version".

"These words are our slow vessels that never meant to contain anything": the more Craig downplays the importance of what his songs contain, the more they shine through their own disarming simplicity, like rough gems gathered from the disorder of the mind and of ordinary days, handed back whole to offer comfort when it's needed. A gift you'll surely want to give yourself.

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06/07/2017