The Fallows – Face The Wolves
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| THE FALLOWS - FACE THE WOLVES |
Coventry quartet the Fallows are ploughing the folk furrow
that seems pretty popular these days but I love a bit of quality folk so I was
excited by the look and feel of this album when it landed on my doormat. The
imagery that the band use is pleasingly sparse and song titles like ‘Break My
Bones’ and ‘When The Sun Goes Down’ give you the sensation that this is going
to be an authentically satisfying folky goodness. With the opening bars of
opening track ‘We Are The Hunted’ things sound promising as it stomps in to
life all country and western fiddles and stamped tambourines but then things
start to unravel very quickly. There’s a famous saying that normally applies to
authors along the lines of “write what you know about” and I’m a firm believer
that this rule should also apply to songwriters. So when four lads from Coventry
start singing about the Devil and painting images of wild west saloons it
becomes instantly hard to engage with. Add to that some overly slick production
values and the slightly affected vocals of front man Ross Darby and the Face
The Wolves is starting to look like a bit of a letdown.
I’m always keen to give artists a chance though, just in
case they ignore the rule of putting their strongest track up front. ‘When The
Sun Goes Down’ is fairly standard Indie-pop stuff with the positivity of the
Wonder Stuff or James and ‘Better To Burn’ is what would’ve happened if Joshua
Tree era U2 had been commissioned to write the theme for an American teen
drama. ‘Raining Back Home’ seems to be a heartfelt message that having the same
weather as someone else makes you feel less homesick but I can’t help shaking
the feeling that the distant land that the band is singing from is Northampton,
in which case the weather in Coventry is fairly likely to be pretty similar. I’m
sure it’s a metaphor but there just isn’t enough sophistication about these
songs to believe that the words are anything but one dimensional. ‘Front Row’
is a highpoint with its jaunty melody and a feel of early Stereophonics tales
of mundane, small town life.
Penultimate track ‘Lo and Behold’ again has the feel of a TV
show theme (maybe one on gardening this time) and album closer ‘It’s Not Over’
wants to be a whiskey soaked Pogues-esque ballad but there isn’t enough
experience, emotion, spirit or bile in the song and that’s where The Fallows
fall down for me. I really wanted to like this album but somewhere along the
road it seems as though the band have fallen down too many traps. Musically
speaking they are spot on but ‘Face The Wolves’ is so overproduced and polished
that it ends up sounding more like the Killlers than Mumford & Sons. If
this band were a sick child and I were a doctor I would prescribe some serious
gigging, some hard living and hard loving before writing a follow up album and
when they come to record it, it should be done in one room with as few
microphones as possible. But I’m not a doctor so that prescription is
technically illegal.
Get more information at: http://www.thefallowsmusic.co.uk