The Mariner’s Children – New Moore Island
I really like it when people are enthusiastic about music. This EP was sent through to me by a PR friend of mine so excited that he didn’t put anything in the email beyond a download link and a single line: “This is good, promise”. It made me laugh, and he was right.
The Mariner’s Children are releasing on the same label as Rachel Dadd, who I first saw sharing a stage with Rozi Plain something like three or four Homegames ago.
Their music is basically folk-pop, if you’re looking for an easy definition. Well, it’s acoustic pop anyway – I have lost track of what makes people call things folk music at the moment, but it tends to require little more than the presence of an acoustic guitar and some sort of other instrument of whatever kind. In this case, while the choruses are lush pop, a lot of the violin riffs sound pretty folky to me, so that counts. We’re only talking vague generalisations here anyway.
There’s an urgent beat to this most of the time, with the flat slap of the drums keeping the songs, particularly the quicker ones, anchored pretty firmly. Flourishes come from the violin, and general depth and fullness of sound from cello and harmonies.
Even the quieter songs tend to built to a helter-skelter pace by the end, although not in the furious gospel stomp style in which The Mumford lads seem to have cornered the market; in this case it tends to be more of a reckless clatter. When they do slow it down, as in the lovely Golden Pine (in the video above) the interplay of the strings and vocals is really lovely, but when the female vocal joins in too I am pretty much sold. You could probably play pretty much anything to me in that style and I would like it, so I found myself drifting off into something of a reverie by the end of it, only to be sharply woken up by the sudden thud of drums moving at pace, as It Carved Your Name into the Ground kicks off.
These two songs really are the highlights of the EP for me, from the lovely to the pacey in two quick steps. Good stuff indeed.
The Mariner’s Children – It Carved Your Name into the Ground
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