Album Review

Port St Willow – Holiday

• 20th Mar 2013

I have been assured that Brian Eno is a fan of Port St Willow. The widely recognised forefather of ambient and protector the avant-garde giving you his personal seal of approval is high praise indeed, but it just doesn’t wash with me I’m afraid.

Originally self-released in early 2012, Holiday opens with an ethereal breeze that blows through and builds with an eerie resonance, and I sense that I can see the appeal that caught Eno’s attention, yet almost as soon as it has started, the atmospheric ambience that I thought would persevere throughout then gives way to an altogether different sound.

What we have for the remainder of the album is mostly militaristic drums, an underpinning glacial toned piano and a fragile, emotive vocal that rings out with utter melancholy. The only problem is that this seems to be pretty much all we get for near enough an hour.

When interviewed, Brian Eno decreed that he was ‘completely entranced’ by the album, and that he felt it was ‘amazing that someone could take the same few chords’ and ‘pretty much the same sort of sounds’ and still inspire him so, and to be honest, I do agree, yet only to a certain extent, as the monotony of the album grated on me, leaving me rather underwhelmed and frankly, quite bored by it all.

When approached separately, the individual tracks are more appealing than the sum of their parts, emitting an endearing fragility and a rather minimal make-up, and any one of a number of tracks would stand strong with airplay on specialist radio shows, sadly it is such a shame that the album that spawned them is rather yawnsome.

With a 2013 re-release on Downtown records, Holiday is now joined by a further 25 minutes of music, a four-part suite entitled Soft Light Rush, serving as a companion piece to the album, the new recording is essentially more of the same, but somehow manages to surpass all that has come before it.

It is gently than it’s sister album, it is more sparse and thoroughly more atmospheric, taking an entirely more minimal approach to vocals that now weave in and out of the beautiful and evocative track in a way that calls to mind Sigur Ros.

Oh, Eno, I do like Port St Willow. Sometimes I like Port St Willow a lot; I just don’t like a lot of Port St Willow.

Venue: Holiday
Support Band: Downtown Records