Quade’s debut Nacre often felt like a submergence. The gradual thrum of the bass against violin whirls and motorik drums created an album of time-traveling post-rock. The band’s delicate textures melded with a constant forward thrum to create a sound that ricocheted from neo-medieval noodling to dubby ambiance with delicate ease. Its sounds submerged the listener deep enough that they swam through its complex movements with ease. Its follow up Foel Tower appears a beguiling creation in comparison, if Nacre flowed with the listener, then Foel Tower whips past them, sneaks into their ears, and lifts them before disappearing. Only to come back through stretching its cold breeze through the gaps where the doors creak.
Foel Tower’s differences from the band’s excellent debut are noticeable but hard to articulate. Rather than sounding like a shift or movement from their debut Foel Tower feels like a counterpoint to Nacre’s explorative groove via a windy rattle. Rather than songs sounding like clear movements they operate closer to splintered folk, elements orbiting in and out of a creaking melancholic core. Opener ‘Beckett’ highlights this shift with its initial clattering of piano keys giving way to a graceful yet moody bass riff around which the rest of the band assembles. The piano appears as the most prominent addition to Quade’s oeuvre taking centre stage on ‘Bylaw 7.1’, where it harmonises with Barney Matthews haunting vocals to create a perfect piece of art rock melancholia. Yet Quade’s aptitude for dub and ambiance hasn’t disappeared with ‘Bylaw 7.1’’s exquisite conclusion recalling their debut’s gorgeous melancholy. But rather than dwelling in this sound Quade instead send it upwards. the whirring synthesisers causing the song to sound as if it’s whipping away with the breeze.
This windswept tone fits with the album’s recording conditions. Conceived in a stone barn in the cradle of a Welsh valley, the album feels even further from any clear roots in the contemporary than their debut. While at points it angles close towards the experimental folk of John Francis Flynn or their hometown Bristol’s burgeoning experimental rock scene, Foel Tower is a distinct anomaly within the current music landscape. At points, it seems to pick up on contemporary trends such as with ‘See Unit’ which carries the disquieting rhythms of Slint with a distinctly jazz-inflected flair. Yet where a breakdown would occur Quade instead blasts out a rapturing wave of noise before slinking back into off-kilter rhythms. While the blend of post-rock discomfort with chamber instrumentation has gained a great amount of flair as of late, Quade treats these styles and instruments with a perspective separate from any other band working right now. The folksy isolation promised by their recording conditions has resulted in an album that feels out of time recalling past present and future all in one sweep.
This untethered sense that the album carries is rooted in not only its songs but its production with returning producer Jack Ogborne emphasising the intimacy. Drums scrape and rattle, the violin seems to cry directly into your ear, and Matthews’s vocals are more grounded than ethereal. At points you feel locked in the same cabin where the band recorded, the greater grounding giving the record an intense intimacy. Yet Quade still plays this shift with a keen precision. On single ‘Canada Geese’ they lean into it with light vocals and finger-picked instrumentation only to gradually deepen. The violin begins weeping across unsteady drum rhythms and doomy bass riffs till by the end the sound appears a gentle hurricane, one that carefully lifts the listener off their feet. The grounded sounds of the album cause this effect to occur over and over, you feel rooted within it to the world Quade has created only for a slight shift to occur. A piece of wind comes through the cracks of that shed deep in the valley only a little at a time until gradually a breeze begins to mount. By the album’s end, it’s torn through the whole structure leaving you alone in a newfound wilderness.
Foel Tower often darts between the comforting and foreboding in a manner that leaves the sense of something perpetually lurking underfoot. Yet what remains undeniable is its effect, a sort of slow bleary-eyed awakening as the past and present are intertwined and defamiliarized. It may take a while to adjust to this new aching world but when one does the effect is enlightening. Quade’s sound has always been unique but with Foel Tower they position themselves amongst the best of England’s burgeoning post-rock resurgence, thanks to a sound that is both subtle but deeply infectious in its vision.
