The Silent Years -‘The Globe’ (Gift Music)
This is a sneaky little bugger of a record. It creeps up on you, and like a small child or younger sibbling, you find it okay in small doses but you don’t want to have to do more than tolerate it. Then somehow, you find that, despite yourself, you start accepting it and liking it for what it is, not for what it isn’t.
The Silent Years have been picking up a fair bit of blog love, and it’s probably deserved. With all the input of so many members, it’s possible to draw comparisons with the likes of The Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree (but not the one trick pony that the latter ultimately proved to be). And yeah, there’s bits of The Shins and Fleet Foxes here too. It’s pastoral rather than psychedelic.
It’s certainly not a faultless record – at sixteen tracks it feels a bit long and I’ll be willing to bet that on anyone’s iTunes the telltale signs of picking and choosing which tracks to play will be revealed. Yet songs like ‘Taking Drugs At the Amusement Park’ and ‘On Our Way Home’ and ‘Know Your Place’ are undoubtedly strong tracks that you will want to play again and again. It’s more than a mixed back, if a little bit dipping in quality in places.
So…you may wish to hear before you buy, but I think you’ll find something here to tempt you…
The Globe is out now on Gift Music.
The Silent Years -‘Know Your Place.’ mp3