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Give Iain Archer a pat on the back for persistence. He's been
trying to be a recognised solo artist in his own right since the
1990s. He seemed to have all but given up by the turn of the
millennium. But a brief stint with Snow Patrol, during which he was
awarded the Ivor Novello Award for songwriting, apparently convinced
him to give it all another crack.
His 21st century albums have, to date, not been particularly
well-received either. Flood The Tanks and Magnetic North were mostly
greeted with indifferent shrugs, even with the latter album's Canal Song featuring on girly-girl hospital drama Grey's Anatomy.
The problem is that Archer is determined, in the face of all
criticism, to pursue a sound that is folk-esque and 'ethereal'. To
quote his press release, To The Pine Roots is all about: "The
whisper of instantly recalled melodies, the burring of an age-old
harmonium, the ghostly reverb..." You get the idea.
What it's actually like is the thousand other male artists out
there who spent too much time listening to Nick Drake growing
up, have witnessed the recent success of Sufjan Stevens et al,
and have decided to get folky with it.
For Archer, it's an outfit that just doesn't fit. At the lower
range and at low volumes his voice becomes a warbling, out of tune
mess. Lyrically, he's trying too hard, as is evident on opener The
Acrobat, where he speculates that Newton would be confused by the
eponymous tumbler. Unless it was a tumbler of absinthe, it's not
likely to cause the legend too many problems.
It's a shame, because when he takes a few steps into country,
pairing plink-plonk guitar with bluesy harmonica, particularly on
eight-minute epic Avalanche, Archer actually gets some pretty good
results. After all, this is close to what he did with Snow Patrol:
guitar music with fairly good riffs and a dash of heartache.
It's obviously not a formula that Archer is content with, however.
On To The Pine Roots he seems instead to respond to moments when things work
well with a blindly panicked move against type. So Everest is followed
by Frozen Lake, on which he seems to be doing his best Chad
VanGaalen impression. It's not very good - VanGaalen's voice soars
in the upper register, while Archer's is as full of cracks as that
damn lake.
All in all, To The Pine Roots is a bit of a sad affair, if not
tragic in a certain way. If Archer just stuck to what he is really
good at, he could make a record that, if not hugely distinctive, would
at least be fairly enjoyable. The irony is that in trying so hard to
work against his natural abilities he makes himself depressingly
average.
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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees
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