Monday 12 December 2011

Albums of the Year 2011 - #5 Lanterns on the Lake - Gracious Tide Take Me Home

Gracious Tide Take Me Home by Lanterns on the Lake seems to have a watery connection with Breaking More Waves. Our coast loving persuasion is drawn to an album whose songs feature titles of Ships in the Rain, Not Going Back To The Harbour and on If I’ve Been Unkind lyrics that gently intone ‘when I sailed the seas, you were never even there’. However even if the band had been singing about steel-toe capped booted builders painting and decorating a castle we suspect we would have fallen head over heels with this album anyway.

Gracious Tide Take Me Home is the musical equivalent of a walk in winter, through frosty fresh air and red-brown scrunching fallen leaves with visible breath punctuating your steps, then returning home to crackling warmth created by the calming glow of a fire in the corner and hot steaming coffee served from chunky china mugs.

Gracious Tide Take Me Home is a sensual, near spiritual record that picks the fibres from post-rock, ambient, acoustic pop and folk and creates something blissfully calming and toughly rousing at the same time. Its gliding moods, set by unhurried piano, delicate glockenspiel, sweeping soaring strings and sad sounding guitars are cinematic and intimate, the kind of music that grabs you inside and pulls slowly and gently at your heartstrings.

Gracious Tide Take Me Home is a record to put on auto-repeat, lay back and swim in, floating around in its celestial beauty.

Gracious Tide Take Me Home is one of our favourite albums of the year.

Keep On Trying by Lanterns on the Lake

Lanterns on the Lake - Not Going Back To The Harbour (Live Session) from The Line Of Best Fit on Vimeo.

No comments: