Divided Time by Native Harrow. You wouldn’t think this “this years thing”, but you’d be wrong.
Release Date: 13th September 2024
Label: Different Time Records
Format: CD / vinyl / digital
There have been some changes afoot in the Native Harrow corral since we last featured them, so it is with some relish to get ahold of this. Back then, Stephen Harms and Devin Tuel, the duo who, to all intents and purposes, are the band, were, literally, marooned in Sussex, courtesy, amongst other reasons, the spicy cough. This release sees them return to their stateside home, to Philly, in fact, after four years in Europe. So what has changed?
normal service – magnified
Thankfully, the answer is not a whole lot. As before, the bulk of the playing is their own, each capable of multi-tasking in the studio, a full band sound remaining well within their remit. And have they brought with them the flavours of old England, so as to pollenate their southern style country soul roots? Well, you’ll have to wait for that, but let’s just say that you’d never far guess they’d ever even been away in the first place. Normal service, were it ever lost, is not only resumed, it is magnified, with a pixel count that bleeds out Muscle Shoals or Sunset Sound.
Wayward Kind opens the album and immediately hits an emotive sweet spot, with gospel piano chords, all tumbling down in a slo-mo sequence that instantly sets a sultry r’n’b groove. Tuel’s voice is dialled down into a relaxed sassy croon. If the last record invited comparison with Grace Slick and Susannah Hoffs, here it is the tones, and mood, of Shelby Lynne that first come to ear, if with Tuel’s own personal identity still high in the mix. As it progresses, so the rhythm section leap in, chapel organ swooping down to add a further note of retrauthenticity. It’s fricking gorgeous! A backing chorus joins, along with a suspicion of brass, before a slinky guitar solo sidles out and the stage is well and truly set.
slow burning bangers
Twangy guitar ushers in the next song, Borrowing Time, cushioned into a bed of pedal steel. Realising they had a winner with Joe Harvey-Whyte, of Hanging Stars, on their last record, he is the one individual retained for this, showing both their good taste and his current worth in pedal steel options. The twangy guitar would be Harms, and probably the bass, but it gets a little difficult to break things further down, as both players take responsibility for guitars, keyboards and percussion, and a mighty variety of each, at that. Indeed, the only other player on the album, bar Harvey-Whyte, is Alex Hall, a drummer, who doesn’t even feature on this track, which nonetheless has a solid metronome of drums to underpin it. It is a woozy doozy of shimmery country blues, with Tuel dripping vocal honey across the surface layers, in long drawn out curveballs.
Two slow burning bangers in, and with no horses to change, I Wanna Thank You begins with a clatter of drums, this time Hall, and it is another swaying smooch of a song that could pass for an outtake from Shelby Lynne’s 1999 breakthrough, down to the strings, even if mellotronic, not that you’d know it. Seemingly getting better and better, Follow Me Round sees certainly no dip in quality, a torchy ballad, with a knowing funky electric piano repeat, and singing bass. This is classy stuff, Tuel’s vocals curling sinuously around the structure of her lyrics; together they write the music. Another, I’m assuming, Harms’ guitar solo is both rich and economical, his knowledge of where the gap between too much and too little set bang on point.
friendly panther
That’s Love sees a change of flow, an acoustic psychedelic ballad, that revisits the Slick references of previous, a low string drone mimicking a sitar, for the full Haight-Ashbury. Tuel becomes first a siren and then an islandful, double tracking herself into additional backing vocals The bada dada dum coda is eerie and unnerving, as is the brusque end. Keeping the listener guessing, the arrangement for Goin’ Nowhere, next, could come from The Meters, with additional Booker T organ, for good measure. Tuel is now a friendly panther, smiling out the put down of the lyric. The bass is again a joy, with percusssion tracks aplenty, to include even some well-timed handclaps.
If the duo have so far had you feel they are master impressionists, Wayward Woman sees such a thought swallowed in shame; this ain’t acting, they mean it. An utterly sumptuous construction, this puts all the necessary parts together as if they were all there in the first place. Sparkles of electric piano, slow bubbling bass, upstruck guitar chips? All present and correct, over which Tuel holds magnetic court, those sirens of earlier coming back to coo convincingly behind her. It even carries a bass solo without being ridiculous. With nowhere left to go, Not The Woman is a blast of smooth Aretha-esque soul/blues, from back in the day. Slide guitar, and I don’t have to say in the style of who, gilds this lily to an incandescent shine.
bacharach melody
Appreciative they have to bring you down, as well as take you higher, the final track slows everything back down, winding away the layers, for the semi bossa of The Garden, strummed acoustic guitar offering the barest of a rhythm. The melody would not disgrace Bacharach, with the arrangement neither a million ways away from giving the same effect. Tuel sounds as if she is little more than breathing the words, it only being her control that displays she is giving one whole lot more of herself. Perfect!
Are we due a revival of smooth sophisti-soul any time soon? Or any of this, for that matter? I think Native Harrow have just demonstrated we are.
Slow dance time, here’s I Wanna Thank You:
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