Last Harbour - Hold Fast, Pioneer

by John Clarkson

published: 25 / 1 / 2005

Label: Tongue Master
Format: CD

intro

Darkly haunting and cinematic second album from Mancurian group Last Harbour with an affinity for fire and brimstone religious imagery

"This world is so unkind/bitter and beautiful/sinister and dutiful" vocalist Kevin Craig concludes towards the end of the elegiac 'The Ties That Bind', the twelfth and final track on his band Last Harbour's latest album. 'Hold Fast Pioneer'. It could in many ways serve as a summary of the record itself. The rustic 'Hold Fast Pioneer' is tinged with haunting, cinematic atmospherics and sometimes harsh, but always melodic arrangements. As its front cover of a stark Eastern European landscape in midwinter, however, suggests, the subject matter of this album for all its beauty is bleak. Unrequited love, adultery, sin and betrayal are its main themes, and, like Sixteen Horsepower and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, with whom Last Harbour share a similar affinity for fire and brimstone religious imagery, the apocalypse never seems far away. A Manchester-based consortium, Last Harbour first formed in 1998, and released their debut EP, a four song 7", 'Hidden Songs' on local label Liquefaction in early 2000. They followed this with a five song mini album, 'An Empty Box is My Heart' in 2001 and their debut full-length album 'The Host of Wild Creatures' in 2002. Both of these came out on the French label Alice in Wonder. 'Hold Fast, Pioneer' has been released on London-based label, Tongue Master Records. While Last Harbour's pivotal members have always been Craig and David Armes (guitar, bass), the band's line-up stabilised at the time of 'The Host of Wild Creatures' to also include Gina Murphy (piano, vocals, melodica, organ), Sarah Kemp (violin, banjo) and Huw McPherson (drums, percussion). Craig's burly, baritone vocals; Armes' orderly acoustic guitar pluckings ; Murphy's wonky, slightly askew piano work ; Kemp's seesawing, Slavic-influenced violin and McPherson's clattering drum work plus icy, occasionally discordant pedal steel on several tracks from special guest James Youngjohns (who also plays with Kemp in local alt.country act Anna Kashfi) all solder together to make 'Hold Fast, Pioneer' an unsettling experience. The opening track 'China White' melds tinkles of piano and gently tilting violin with slowly rattling, funereal slabs of drums, and finds the gravel-voiced Craig, "his heart sent to flame" becoming absorbed by the china white skin of a girl he meets in a dark bar. As he becomes increasingly and much to his own fear fixated, he finds, however, that her skin, far from being unblemished, instead is covered with "holes and the scars and cuts and the bruises", a mantra which he obsessively and with horror repeats to himself over and over as the song ends. In an ambiguous twist, one is left uncertain at the conclusion of 'China White' whether the girl’s bruises are possibly stigmata marks, or if it is something that she has done to herself, or Craig has done to her because she has rejected him. It is a chilling start, one which is heightened as one doesn't really know what has happened, but much of the rest of the album proves to be similarly unnerving. 'Corrosives' opens with scrapings of loops and Armes gently twitching his guitar before swelling gradually upwards to become an Eastern European-flavoured orchestral light waltz. Craig plays the role of a preacher returning to his home town after a long absence, but as he sings "this town is full of hate and ire/this town is petty and bitter and jealous/it is heavy in heart and vicious/I hope that you are ready for a town on fire" one realises that, far from returning to try to save it, he has come to take vengeance on it and to destroy it. Breezy country gig 'Your Verses' features a sneering Gina Murphy taking a rare turn on vocals and playing the role of a woman scorned who seeks revenge on her former lover by destroying the songs he has written for his new love. The morose and sinister 'Johnny Row' has Craig bouncing melancholic vocals against a harpy-like ten-piece choir, and finds its central protagonist, along with the other occupants of a doomed ship, trying to "scourge temptation" but ending up damned regardless. The shimmering 'The Ties That Bind' meanwhile brings the album to a soft, beguiling close and has a weary Craig, knowing that there is nothing fair about what he is doing, breaking up with his lover and suggesting to her that she takes her chances with God for comfort. Often disturbing, but equally so compelling, 'Hold Fast, Pioneer' is undoubtedly a very dark work, but combines this with a set of lusciously majestic and sublime musical landscapes. A more bittersweet album is unlikely to be released this year.

Track Listing:-

1 China White
2 Circle
3 We Always Said
4 I Come For The Unsaved
5 Corrosives
6 His Cold Hand
7 - Part II -
8 Your Verses
9 Johnny Row
10 Serpents
11 Silver Leaves
12 The Ties That Bind
13 The Note

interviews

Interview (2012)

In our fourth interview with them, John Clarkson talks to Kev Craig, the front man with Manchester alternative rock collective Last Harbour, who will be playing our next Pennyblackmusic Bands' Night', about their new album, 'Your Heart, It Carries the Sound', which was recorded in a church

Interview (2010)

Interview (2008)

Interview (2002)