Astronauts
Four Songs E.P.
Lo Recordings
Monday 3rd November, 2014
It’s been a good year for
Astronauts, aka London songwriter Dan Carney. Debut single
‘Skydive’ went a little bit viral, reaching the Hype Machine Top 3 most blogged
tracks and receiving over 150,000 plays on Soundcloud in its week of release.
This was followed by debut album
‘Hollow Ponds’, an expansive collection received with rapturous acclaim by those who know about this sort
of thing (see the quotes below if you don’t believe us), and gaining UK radio
support from the likes of Steve Lamacq, Cerys Matthews, Huey Morgan, Tom
Ravenscroft, and Gideon Coe.
Dan’s decided to round off the first year of his life as Astronauts with ‘Four Songs’, an E.P.
comprising material which didn’t quite fit on ‘Hollow Ponds’, but which he felt
were every bit as good as anything on it. It’s a mini-collection that further
showcases the alt-rock/singer-songwriter/psych/krautrock versatility and
effervescence of Dan’s musical approach.
Opener
‘Only Son’ is the last unreleased song to deal
with Dan’s horrific leg fracture (and accompanying hospital stay) last year,
which inspired much of the material on
‘Hollow Ponds’. Simultaneously
claustrophobic and smoothly melodic, lurching and blissful, and driven along by
synth washes, string plinks, and foreboding, it relocates 1980s FM rock to
early 1970s Germany. Dream-pop of the kind that, if you’re not careful, will
poke you sharply in the eye and steal your wallet.
Lion Tamer’ is propelled by skittering layers of percussion
reminiscent of
Four Tet, with
intertwining
Fugazi-shaped guitar
parts underpinning a plaintive vocal that unfurls into a joyous
call-and-response coda, buoyed by
Crosby,
Stills & Nash-style harmonies.
The plaintive, poignant ‘Think On (2003)’ inhabits more
familiar singer-songwriter territory, with an obvious debt to Elliot Smith, one of Dan’s musical
heroes. The E.P. ends with ‘Death From The Stars’, a dream-like, pastoral instrumental
that showcases Dan’s love of acoustic instruments and creaky dynamics. Interlocking
open-tuned guitars float unhurriedly into the air, merging hauntingly with
droning clarinet and piano lines.
London conceptual artist Barry Sykes, a childhood friend of Dan's, has made a superbly quirky video for
'Only Son', while Dan has put together videos for
'Lion Tamer' and
'Think On (2003)' using archive footage he's stumbled across (all links below).
We love
‘Four Songs’ and we hope you do too. Dan is
currently working on the second
Astronauts album, which will be released in
2015.
Soundcloud
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