BROKEN BOAT – Small Defeats (Self-Released)

Broken BoatA Hertfordshire-based acoustic trio comprising songwriter Daniel Bahrami and multi-instrumentalists Brendan Kearney and Jess Hart (who also did the embroidery for the sleeve design) with contributions from Jerome Maree on percussion and Tim Winward on trumpet, their debut album arrives after a couple of years of gigging and a 2012 EP that earned the blessing of Bob Harris.

Blossoming from a five song home demo, despite a couple of lightweight tracks (the jaunty, accordion driven ‘Basement Days’ sounds like an Eels throwaway and the la la la-ing shuffle ‘Two Balloons’ is rather Slim Chance lite) it’s a generally appealing affair that wisely opens with its most immediate offering, the sunny melancholia of the jogging folksy pop title track with its trumpet stabs and defiant I’m alive lyrics.

They sustain attention with the part sung, part spoken, lap-steel coloured slow swayer ‘Pencil Memories’ and the glockenspiel tinkling of ‘Night Owl’, its summery jauntiness belying the equally regret-streaked ‘sorry I let you down’ lyrics. They’ve been likened to Bright Eyes and The Decemberists, which seems as fair a comparison as any, even if Bahrami’s laconic nasal tones don’t have the same textural timbre or colour as Conor Oberst or Colin Meloy, although the frequent mingling of folk, country and bluegrass might equally call The Lilac Time to mind while on the perky ‘God Writes Fiction’ he even put me in mind of young Al Stewart.

Although predominantly of an upbeat tempo, there are a clutch of slower numbers: ‘Water & Wine’is a dreamily tender affirmation of love that features a wistful line about being “the bent and broken half of a better whole” while the achingly lovely ‘Song In D’ sketches an incipient reconciliation to the accompaniment of lap steel, harmonica and acoustic guitar. Again essaying a theme of (alcohol) troubled relationships, the slow waltzing ‘Morning Rain’ marks a stylistic departure with its accordion conjuring a Cohenesque Gallic ambience as Bahrami and Hart trade verses and harmonise.

The album closes on a quiet Cohen influenced note too with the enigmatically autobiographical (“no god could forgive what your friends did”) six minute, slow swaying ‘Time Takes Us All’’s late might life-affirming meditation on mortality, change and the need to follow where our paths leads, wrestling big triumphs from small defeats.

The band’s name might evoke notions of being becalmed or floundering, but on this evidence they’re definitely making progress upstream.

Mike Davies

Here’s the official promo video:

 


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