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| I’m informed that Bristol-based Crescent had their beginnings in the early Nineties as a lo-fi punk band. On the evidence of Little Waves, they couldn’t be currently positioned any further from that musical standpoint. |
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Little Waves is a minimalist, ambient acoustic album, often atonal and slow-moving. This is not to say that it’s devoid of merit, for there is still much to relate to and, as with post-rock, an overall sense of movement and a textual richness which becomes apparent over the full length of each track.
As ‘Little Waves’ and ‘Cup’ open the album very much in this vein, the less persevering listener may be robbed of tracks like the much warmer ‘Nearly Ready’, which utilises brass and soft backing vocals to offer something that’s a little closer to standard folk, soothing and gently swaying.
More of this character and humanity appears as the album continues, like sunlight shining through the slightly threadbare curtains. And there is a “threadbare” feeling of the tracks being rough around the edges and very much improvised, which only adds to serve character to an already idiosyncratic album.
This is demonstrated on ‘Before’ which takes a wandering, pensive path, building harmonies through layers of instruments before stripping everything back to a minimal brass section. And although I’m not enamoured by every second of such an experimental and improvised offering, I can’t help but admire the vision and creation of such a cohesive track.
Little Waves is by no means an easy album to listen to, but there is definitely reward and value in stripping the layers and discovering some fine minimal songwriting.
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| James Haddrill - 7/10 |
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