Bloom: A Brief Review Of The Debut Full-Length Album From Modern Nature (Ultimate Painting, Woods, Sunwatchers)
It's a shame that most of the attention that will first be diverted towards Modern Nature will simply be due to the players here, and the bands they've come from. And I suppose the news that Jack Cooper (Ultimate Painting), Will Young (BEAK>), Aaron Neveu (Woods), and Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers) have come together, along with cellist Rupert Gillett, is news. But what deserves the most attention is the music itself on this absolutely superb record. How To Live, out on Friday via Bella Union, is full of the kind of ambitious stuff that easily transcends any narrow indie-pop label.
"Bloom", a brief hymn of a figure, eases us into the record, with the subtle "Footsteps" offering up a nice Can-like gallop. "Turbulence" is utter stillness, a distant cousin to later Talk Talk numbers, while "Criminals" is a more spacious rendering of the kind of thing Cooper pursued routinely in Ultimate Painting, fleshed out here in a way that recalls Floyd in-between Syd and Dark Side. The subtly roiling "Peradam" strays into the lanes of both folk and prog rock, with Tobias' saxophone keeping this grounded in some small way, while "Nightmares" is nearly lush, shades of Robert Wyatt peeking through here. With moments that feel like modern classical music, and others that seem downright jazzy, the songs on How To Live function as serious artistic efforts, yet with nary a trace of pretension.
If so much of the appeal of Modern Nature's music can be hard to pin down, largely for fear of getting the sound wrong in words, a cut like "Nature", the lone holdover here from the band's EP earlier this year, seems easier to digest. The track, a supple blending of fusion-y explorations with folk-y hooks, is still surprisingly affecting, especially so when considering how the track nearly floats away behind Cooper's whispered vocals. The epic closer to How To Live, "Devotee", is likely to earn this group more Talk Talk comparisons, even as the cut's coda veers into the kind of territory mapped out by Radiohead in the 21st century. Still, for all my talk of other bands, Modern Nature have pulled off the rare feat of making something that genuinely feels new, and they've done it by pursuing something that feels timeless, and, as others have said, pastoral. By exploring a few pre-punk styles, Modern Nature have constructed a brand of rock that has all the intuitive playing, and group rapport, of an old jazz band's best sides.
How To Live is out on Friday via Bella Union.
More details on Modern Nature via the band's official website, or official Facebook page.
[Photo: James Sharp]