Artist: Iain Archer
Title: To The Pine Roots
Label: Black
Genre: Indie
Bitrate: 155kbit av.
Time: 00:39:35
Size: 45.90 mb
Rip Date: 2009-02-18
Str Date: 2009-03-23
1. The Acrobat 3:39
2. Songbird 3:55
3. Black Mountain Quarry 3:17
4. Hey Mia, Don't Be Lonely 4:18
5. Everest 8:04
6. Frozen Lake 5:07
7. Streamer On A Kite 4:09
8. To Mend And Move Along 3:34
9. The Nightwatchman 3:32
Release Notes:
The ex Snow Patrol guitarist/songwriter Iain Archer will
release a new album called To the Pine Roots on 23rd March on
Black Records.
To The Pines Roots is an ethereal album, recorded at the point
of writing and humming with imperceptible sounds. The whisper
of instantly recalled melodies, the burring of an age-old
harmonium, the ghostly reverb of pinewood walls and escapist
rhythms teased from an acoustic guitar, distantly recalling a
Celtic past.
Iain Archer is a songwriter of the forever-enigmatic mould.
Unencumbered by musical trends and time constraints, he waits
for the songs to find him. Here are the songs arrived at and
visited by, not contrived or conspired but borne of liberated
songwriting instinct. Within a simple framework of sparse
arrangement and leading rhythms, forged over 3 months of
visits to Schwarzwald Germany, Archer jumps from one
songwriting muse and ruse to another, with the seamless
coherent thread of a rare and oft overlooked songwriting
talent.
From the hazy recollections of childhood he draws vivid the
scenes of Black Mountain Quarry and Streamer On A Kite; with a
playwrights gift for characterization The Acrobat and The
Nightwatchman, pertinent metaphors for life and living; and at
the albums core Frozen Lake, a steepling spire of a love song
with a fragile voice, buoyed and raised by harmonium and
strings.
It has been a furtive creative path for Iain Archer, a
restlessness carried from his formative years in the Northern
Irish seaside town of Bangor, the child of a musical and
religious household. 'Bangor's a bit of a world of its own,
he recalls. 'Even in Northern Ireland terms. There's a certain
sort of separateness. And I think that's why when you're a
teenager there you have a real sense of wanting to escape, to
anywhere else.'
Written and recorded under Archer's own steam, To The Pine
Roots has already sold out much of its original pressing from
sales exclusively through his website, a release typical of
such a free spirited artist. From his early career with the
mid-90s solo records on Scottish label Sticky, Iain Archer has
always forged an instinctive songwriters path. Having
diverted from that first solo incarnation to join the Reindeer
Section and serve an Ivor Novello winning spell as a
songwriter with Snow Patrol, he would make another volte-face
into Flood The Tanks (2005) and Magnetic North (2007), his at
first insular and then latterly expansive albums on the PIAS
label.
It is a rare gift afforded to few contemporary writers, that
ability to switch guise and muse. But on To The Pine Roots, in
a cottage in Rhein Valley on the edge of the Black forest,
Iain Archer has created nine supreme examples of the
songwriting craft.