Valley Maker

The great outdoors and landscapes are the images that come to mind listening to this album from Austin Crane. There’s a spacial sparseness about these songs that work within his guitar based framework, filled out with his voice and occasionally collaborator Amy Godwin.

Ob Lightning opens the album and is a template for what follows: simple sounding finger picking guitar with Crane’s slightly nasal vocal complementing it. One of the highlights is Only Friend; a haunting beautiful song featuring a slightly off centre vocal from Ms Goodwin. And it is Ms Godwin’s vocals that lift these songs out of what could have been quite a repetitive formula, as she does on Something Like Someone and Another Way Home.

The album never gets into a rut as such but it does tend to flow into one over a few songs, and at times it does feel a little long. The lengthy Goodness arrests this as it subtly shifts gears, moods and direction midway through, and closes with the disconcerting When I Was A Child.

This is deceptively complex album that at once feels welcoming and alienating. Sometimes you think you get it only for it slip away later. It’s not a difficult listen just not easy album to warm to. Repeated listens help but one rather ends up admiring the music than forming any real emotional attachment to it.