Album Review

Chalk – How To Become A Recluse

• 27th Oct 2014

Ex-BBC Radio One Introducing presenters Jen Long and Ally McCrae are exceptionally good eggs in the UK music scene and have been championing breaking talent for many a year now, so it’s a pleasure to see Jen striking out with her Kissability label – especially if she’s going to keep putting out releases like Chalk’s new record How To Become A Recluse which is dropping as a limited edition cassette after its release on SARC on 27th October.

Make no mistakes, this one does what it says on the tin. Gloomy, dirgey, introspective songwriting is coupled with the sort of angsty intensity that made Elliott Smith one of the most vital artists of a generation. Despite the rather sombre mood there’s a ray of hope that occasionally breaks through the fog on tracks like ‘Slept With A Knife’, which is oddly reminiscent of Hundred Reasons’ earlier, less effervescent, material. There’s also more than a passing similarity to Brand New’s groundbreaking record Déja Entendu in the mix of pleading, emotionally resonant lyricism and guitar tones that you could use to crack rocks – we’d like to get a look at Chalk’s pedal board and rig at some point, because that’s a crunch to die for. Throughout, twinkling acoustics and harmonics dance across the sparse instrumentation as on the sublime ‘There Are Certain Things We Haven’t Told You’ demonstrating a masterful knowledge of light and dark, contrasting tone and mood to startling effect.

How To Become A Recluse is the sort of record that says more in a whisper than a thousand screaming voices could ever accomplish – it is, in the truest sense, a human soul laid bare; there’s nowhere to hide when the majority of a record is one voice and one guitar working in synchronicity. The best records are born from honesty and when coupled with the talent of a gifted songwriter and stroyteller, as in the case of Chalk, the result can’t help but be a triumph. This is a gift for a rainy day, a reflective collection of thoughts that is so universally identifiable that it’s as if Chalk has ripped a hole into your deepest hopes and fears, stuck his hand in, and had a good old pull on the strings.

Is that a hint of the unsettling opening riff of Rage Against The Machine’s seminal Born Of A Broken Man hidden in the over-driven mess ‘A Song For A Friend’? We hope so, because that would really make this record perfect.

– Jamie Otsa

Venue: How To Become A Recluse
Support Band: Kissability / SARC