The problem with always lying to yourself is that you can distort anything until it fits. This means that for many nature and what we know as the countryside become one and the same thing; seen through a car window or the smoke of a disposable barbecue, as a nation the moment we arrive somewhere every effort is made to construct exactly the same environment and believe it’s something different.
Claiming then that an album was inspired by nature sounds at best hollow, but for LIFE’s Mez Saunders-Green there’s more than a hint of authenticity to it. This is because the ideas that shaped the band’s fourth record came to him during a hundred and ninety two mile trek between Britain’s coasts, a journey which he’s revealed was charachterised by “Cryptic placards, farmers hanging dead moles on chicken wire, phallic mountains, pikes and ridges, Mother Earth always winning.”
Notes from the journey evolved into songs and the album’s foundation lies in The Dollywagon, a right to roam anthem that unloads a leafy chorus in answer to Green’s East Yorkshire sprechgesang, but other wild flowerings delight as well in Drinking Games, Yan Fuel and Turning In’s plaintive groundsheet boogie. Stay to the end though, as closing pair Buried Giant and Morning Fog offer a reflective, epic conclusion. In nature’s jaws you can lie to yourself about what it means to be where you are, but Abstract / Natural proves that there are other ways by which to know the truth.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 