This is serious music but it's done with a deft touch. What in other hands would be pretentious, is here meaningful. That is how I feel about Tim Smith's other band, Midlake, a group doing a style of music I rarely tolerate from other groups. His new project is called Harp. The band is essentially Smith and his wife, Kathi Zung, and their debut release is out today on Bella Union.
Called Albion, the record imagines a kind of timeless music. This is heavy, with a track like "I Am the Seed" earning comparisons to both Nick Drake and Faith-era Cure. No mean feat that. Still, Smith and Zung somehow don't let this get too lugubrious. "A Fountain" ripples and shimmers with a graceful sense of synth-pop about it. There's something both organic and artifical here, and the jostling between the surface effects and vocals is what gives this a kind of primal power. Things on Albion are simple, yes, but then again so was the music of Midlake. And, as I said, Smith manages to do this kind of thing very well where others do not.
Tim Smith has, on some level, swapped acoustic-based forms for keyboard-centered ones. The music here is similar in a sense to that of Midlake, but the genre-switching is what's apparent. Where before Smith might have reached for the trappings of a country or folk number to anchor his melody, here he goes for the dream pop tools. But it's hard not to be moved by the lush "Daughters of Albion"; I mean, it sounds like something we'd have heard on the Projekt label a few decades ago. And I count that as praise, not ridicule, for the record. Harp may not have the immediacy of Midlake, but the music is enthralling on a few levels.
Albion by Harp is out today via Bella Union.
[Photo: Bella Union]