SOLARFERENCE – Locks & Bolts (own label)

Locks & BoltsLocks & Bolts is the second full-length album from Solarference and it’s live. The duo both sing and Sarah Owen plays piano while Nick Janaway plays guitar and dulcimer – the difference is that they both play computers as well.

I really should like Solarference more than I do. Without the electronic tricks and found sounds they would be damn good; two fine voices, musically skilled and with a penchant for rewriting familiar songs. Too often, though, the trickery doesn’t enhance the music. An exception is ‘Jute Mill Song’, heavily recomposed with an additional industrial soundtrack that really does something. On the other hand, ‘One More Day’ is moved away from the rolling rhythm of a shanty which is enough innovation in itself and the sounds added to the composition are just noise.

Using the electronics to enable them to be their own backing singers really works and means that they can reproduce their records live on stage and turning found sounds into a rhythm track as on ‘Farewell He’ is a good move – but Steeleye Span did something like that on ‘Fighting For Strangers’ forty years ago. There are appropriately ghostly sounds on ‘Lucy Wan’ but also something that sounds like a cork being drawn from a bottle – what is that about?

Their best recompositions, ‘Come To My Window/The Complaining Maid’ for example, are really good and ‘Dives And Lazarus’, which is blended with the chorus of ‘Song On The Times’, is superb – but they sing that a capella. I can admire Sarah and Nick’s vision and experimentation but I think they have taken it a step too far.

Dai Jeffries

Artists’ website: http://solarference.com/

‘I Wish That The Wars Were All Over’ – live:

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