Brown Horse – All The Right Weaknesses: Album Review

Seuras Og

1 year ago

If these are their weaknesses, God help us when we see their strengths!

Release Date: 4th April 2025

Label: Loose Music

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

A CORKER AND A KEEPER

The precision and confidence that Brown Horse trot out with, for Verna Bloom, the first track in this, their second full length release, shows just how far this five, sometime six-piece have come. A few statement chords to set the scene, before a swift and elegant change in pace, it then becomes a sprightly canter around the paddock. Psychedelic guitars meander about some confident surefire strumming, a cradle for Patrick Turner’s voice, still murky in the mix, but never muddy, a trick well learnt from the Stipe notebook. Drums drum and bass bounds; it’s a corker and a keeper. So redolent is it of the west coast of an Atlantic away, this could only come from Norwich.

ONE YEAR ON…

Barely a year since Reservoir wowed this writer, relentless touring has honed their identity as a fully formed unit. The then newer members are now integral to a seamless whole. This is the sound of a band decades in, rather than just a few years, and, once more, that thought brings The Band to mind, especially as an accordion wails over spit’n’sawdust harmonies. But there is more than that, newer textures now creeping in, the song constructions, and not just some the vocal presence, suggesting immersion in early R.E.M., with due attention also to the jittery feel of similar vintage Talking Heads.

But, through the broad array of instrumentation offered and displayed, the resultant brew is entirely their own, however proudly worn are those influential ingredients. So, yup, guitars, lots of guitars, bass and drums get, variously, garnished with electric piano and pedal steel, banjo, accordion and fiddle slipping in also where appropriate. Steel player, Emma Tovell, has come on in leaps and bounds since the last album, her play now encompassing pedal as well as lap, and is never less than a joy. She also designed and fashioned the cover.

Knowing sophistry

Back to Verna Bloom, and for those struggling, she was the actress who played Mrs Belding in High Plains Drifter, that alone a snapshot of the world this band inhabits. A sophisticated slice of knowing sophistry that could hail from any decade of the last six, or from the next. At the risk of over ladening the burden of compares, I can even find echoes of the debut from Roxy Music here. It is an opener par excellence. It leads then into the clip clop banjo of Wisteria Vine, with yearning guitar a warning flare on the horizon. Phoebe Troup’s vocals are the perfect foil to Turner’s, a sweetness to his faltering vibrato. Nyle Houlihan provides some loping bass lines that round out the whole, kept in check by the deft percussion of Ben Auld (who has actually since parted amicably from the band).

As before, there are at least four songwriters in the band, but, even more so than with the debut, you would be challenged to guess any individual responsibility. Corduroy Couch is an agreeable chug, imparting a peaceful easy feeling, the instrumentation a well balanced wash of guitars and piano. Any song that starts with “We watched The Matrix on a corduroy couch” invites attention, beckoning in images of quite how this band spend their downtime. (Is there a Holiday Inn in Cromer?) Followed by the slower psilocybin shimmer of Dog Rose, fuzz on the steel and shadows across the keyboard, Turner quavers a delicate melody, almost disguising the slowly deliberate build beefing up behind him, ahead the release of some smouldering guitar from the singer. Play it again to check you got that right.

STEEL CHEMTRAILS

The title track garlands in on a steer of steel chemtrails, for more of that The Band vibe, even a tinge of Dylan, B, now creeping into the vocal, or is that Ferry singing Dylan. Lurching from side to side, it is an attractive melody, all sorts of guitars ringing out. Holy Smokes, which follows is a rolling narrative, steel jousting with fiddle, another, um, string too Turner’s bow, and more of that Hudsonesque accordion from Rowan Braham.

Current single, Radio Free Bolinas, immediately evokes R.E.M.’s Radio Free Europe, at least in name, but is a bass and drums led burner with an angsty vocal, seeming to forewarn. The non vocal “chorus” then erupts in a unison of ensemble chicanery. As Turner takes a further verse, so further sounds seep in and out. A scorching ripticide of a song, quite what it actually references is hard to gauge, beyond the fact there actually was such a radio station.

CLASSIC CURVES

Tombland opens on a classic curve of electric guitar. The tune, as Turner sings, tries to wrest another song from your consciousness, but, friend or not, the devil if I remember it. But, just before it clicks, it is off into another direction that it veers. By this stage, you really are appreciating what a confident set of songs this is proving to be, the mix managing to amalgamate the often wide array of sounds with a dexterous precision. The producer here is Owen Turner, reprising his same role for Reservoir, the band returning to his Sickroom Studios, home from home, in Norfolk. Curse is a further sweet country confection, a catchy singa-strumma-steelalong, that heads will nod to (and with). Braham’s piano is eloquent and telling in the build down toward the end.

SLOW TICKING BANJO

I’m always going to fall for a Bill Callahan reference, so, as his name appears in Wipers: “Bill Callahan in the van, cutting through the car park“, I’m hooked. I’m guessing on the radio rather than reality, but, you never know, I think he’d like this sort of stuff, as the mix of steel and slow ticking banjo is becoming quite the trademark feature of this second helping.

Given most steel players are also the banjo player in bands, it is reassuring that this can all actually be done live, as the banjo is in the hands of Troup. Her backing vocals are especially worthwhile on this song too. As it all soars to a climax, it is a late blooming high water mark across the disc, that crescendo only capable of being followed by something a little more downbeat and back porch. this is duly delivered by the feelgood jugband of Far Off Places, with piano, banjo and fiddle in pole positions, and a road song to leave you with a warm glow and a sense of all’s well. If music cannot instill such pleasures, well, what is it for?

If Reservoir was the Brown Horse calling card, this has them now firmly ensconced, feet on your furniture, bonded besties for life. A very, very good album, indeed. They will be touring it through most of April into early May: