Departures

If you’re someone who normally finds a sweet, mellow, gentle folk instrumentation a turnoff, and you still want an album that feels like a big, soft hug, Jerome Alexander’s debut album is here for you. Departures is a Mary Poppins-meets-treacle-toff of light ambience and Room 29-friendly folk elements, opens gently and pastorally with ‘Running Through Woodland’, in a Kveldssanger mould, while ‘Autumn’ has neoclassical touches, like Michael Cashmore, and Americana-inflected acoustic guitars ramble pleasingly about the album’s psyche, all pulling together cohesively and melancholically while never getting in each other’s way. The synth-swell, which surfaces in tracks like ‘All Around Me’, is also at its most transcendently plaintive, while the pianos and violins dart about each other like schoolkids at breaktime; the percussion is so smooth and gentle on a fair number of tracks it almost borders on the ASMR vibe. ‘At The Top Of This Hill’, track five, is particularly clever, ostensibly a Syd Matters instrumental, while you’re thinking, this guy could tour as their support act. ‘Snowdonia’ also gives you the most spellbinding vocal harmony you’ll ever hear. Departures isn’t adventurous sonically or by way of any real departure, although he does briefly make a convincing argument to sell an airdrop of ‘A New Approach To Baths’ in Sweetbriar Rose, earlier. It’s the most charmingly modest attempt at making a soothing, relaxing, slightly dreamy, forty minutes that you will probably hear all year. In an ideal world, it would be a multi-national industry’s cash cow, and a very decent award nominee.

MESSAGE TO BEARS - Departures

RATING - 8.2/10

FAVORITE TRACKS - Autumn, Snowdonia, Hope

GENRE - Ambient, Folk, Electronic, Natural