Savaging Spires - Savaging Spires

by Andy Cassidy

published: 12 / 9 / 2011

Label: Critical Heights Records
Format: CD

Shadowy and menacing debut album from autumnal English folk act, Savaging Spires

Review

According to their press release, Savaging Spires’ “true identity is still somewhat shadowy.” This is perfectly in keeping with the music on this, their first LP. There is a real unease to opening track 'Bending the Rules of Time' with its ghostly vocals, strings, whistles and air of menace. Described by the band as a “working song for the dead,” it could equally be a sea shanty for a crew of ghostly pirates. The music sounds as though there may well be a parallel universe, one in which Virginia Astley provides the soundtrack to the nightmares of children. Trust further intensifies the sense of doom, adding looped feedback to the already unsettling acoustic and vocal atmosphere before segueing into a movement of vocals and uplifting music – an aural salve for the shivers the listener has already experienced. 'Photographic Memory' is a more straightforward song, more in the acoustic balladeer style and is welcome, if brief, respite from the gnawing anxiety, while 'Cemetery Lodge' has all the nervous excitement of a Ouija board session in a deserted house – a feeling of wanting to continue but being afraid of the consequences. For me the most menacing track on the album is 'Crows', which repeatedly exhorts the listener to “wake up, wake up, wake up.” This, for some reason, touched me deeply, and just for a second I had the notion that I may well be asleep and that this strange and unsettling music was the dream I was inventing for myself. The album closes with 'Seconds in Motion', a gentle harmonica and guitar piece, which ensures that, no matter what you take away from the album, any sense of anxiety it has instilled will remain unresolved. This is real countryside in autumn music, reminiscent in many ways of Paul Giovanni and Magnet’s soundtrack for 'The Wicker Man'. It’s the sort of music that one would love to listen to deep in the woods, but only with a torch and a clearly marked out path home. There is a particularly English feel to it, like a Wordsworth poem re-imagined by M.R. James – yes, the daffodils and the lakes are there, but there are also voices in the bushes and clouds of dark foreboding hanging overhead.

Track Listing:-

1 Bending The Rules Of Time
2 When The Devil Says He's Dead
3 Trust
4 October
5 Photographic Memory
6 Apostrophe Lake
7 Messenger
8 Blackbirds
9 Cemetery Lounge
10 Crows
11 Sisters
12 Seconds In Motion