Two Wings – A Wake (Tin Angel Records)

Two Wings – A Wake (Tin Angel Records)

‘Peace-Fear’, the opening song to ‘A Wake’ – also the first single to be culled from Two Wings’ second album – possesses an unerring ability to both seduce and deceive. With its big euphoric sound, all jangling guitar glissando, innate pop sensibility and radio-friendly vibe, and with Hanna Tuulikki’s mercurial voice pitched somewhere beyond those of Stevie Nicks and Ann Wilson it conjures up all manner of Californian possibilities. To then find that Two Wings are from Glasgow and that their musical roots are more firmly immersed in traditional folk, experimentation and the blues comes as some great surprise.

Yet by the time that the record moves effortlessly into ‘Loveless’ and ‘We Can Show You More’ such influences do start to reveal themselves as guitarist and singer Ben Reynolds’ past life with Trembling Bells creeps up slowly from behind. With its whimsical psychedelic sheen and far grittier undercarriage, the former continues on an arc once traced by The Incredible String Band around the time of Liquid Acrobat As Regards The Air whilst the latter would not have been even remotely out of place on Richard and Linda Thompson’s Pour Down Like Silver had it been recorded in the new millennium because what Two Wings do have is the most wonderful capacity to relocate the past very firmly in the context of the present.

It is a trick they repeat on ‘Stranger’ where Tuulikki’s voice morphs into that of Kate Bush as it soars way above a glorious pop template of atmospheric synths. The choral voices of Reynolds and bassist Kenneth Wilson, Tuulikki and the band’s other female singer Lucy Duncombe then coalesce into a quite magical diapason on the exultant ‘A Wake To The Dream’ before the brass which was subsequently added to the original framework of the album’s closer ‘Go To Sleep’ at Dennistoun’s Diving Bell Studio moves the song from what must already have been rather compelling into something that is really quite extraordinary.

[Rating:4]

A Wake was released on 14th April 2014 through Tin Angel Records

Two Wings Tour Dates:

25th May – Bridge Hotel, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

27th May – The Hope, Brighton

29th May – Castle Hotel, Manchester

30th May – The Tin Music & Arts, Coventry

31st May – Sebright Arms, London

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