Iain Archer - To The Pine Roots
Conceived and recorded in a cottage by the Black Forest and imbued with the voices and performances of friends and family, To The Pine Roots is the new album from Iain Archer, released on Black Records on 23rd March.
To The Pines Roots is an ethereal album, recorded at the point of writing and humming with imperceptible sounds. The whisper of instantly recalled melodies, the burring of an age-old harmonium, the ghostly reverb of pinewood walls and escapist rhythms teased from an acoustic guitar, distantly recalling a Celtic past.
Iain Archer is a songwriter of the forever-enigmatic mould. Unencumbered by musical trends and time constraints, he waits for the songs to find him. Here are the songs arrived at and visited by, not contrived or conspired but borne of liberated songwriting instinct. Within a simple framework of sparse arrangement and leading rhythms, forged over 3 months of visits to Schwarzwald Germany, Archer jumps from one songwriting muse and ruse to another, with the seamless coherent thread of a rare and oft overlooked songwriting talent.
>From the hazy recollections of childhood he draws vivid the scenes of Black Mountain Quarry and Streamer On A Kite; with a playwrights gift for characterization The Acrobat and The Nightwatchman, pertinent metaphors for life and living; and at the albums core Frozen Lake, a steepling spire of a love song with a fragile voice, buoyed and raised by harmonium and strings.
It has been a furtive creative path for Iain Archer, a restlessness carried from his formative years in the Northern Irish seaside town of Bangor, the child of a musical and religious household. "Bangor's a bit of a world of its own," he recalls. "Even in Northern Ireland terms. There's a certain sort of separateness. And I think that's why when you're a teenager there you have a real sense of wanting to escape, to anywhere else.â€
Written and recorded under Archer’s own steam, To The Pine Roots has already sold out much of its original pressing from sales exclusively through his website, a release typical of such a free spirited artist. From his early career with the mid-90s solo records on Scottish label Sticky, Iain Archer has always forged an instinctive songwriters path.
Having diverted from that first solo incarnation to join the Reindeer Section and serve an Ivor Novello winning spell as a songwriter with Snow Patrol, he would make another volte-face into Flood The Tanks (2005) and Magnetic North (2007), his at first insular and then latterly expansive albums on the PIAS label.
It is a rare gift afforded to few contemporary writers, that ability to switch guise and muse. But on To The Pine Roots, in a cottage in Rhein Valley on the edge of the Black forest, Iain Archer has created nine supreme examples of the songwriting craft.