Aberfeldy – Somewhere To Jump From
Aberfeldy - Somewhere To Jump From
Despite being tour support for many high profile acts and featuring in a Coca Cola advert, Scottish indie-pop outfit Aberfeldy have somehow managed to elude any meaningful widespread recognition. Somewhere to Jump From helps us to understand why. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it’s unassuming and modest to a fault – shuffling through the ears almost unnoticed, leaving no footprints in the wake of its gentle harmonies and acoustic strumming.
Even when this record thinks big, it acts small. Every saving grace of this record – every effective hook, every sweetly wry turn of phrase – is tampered and counterbalanced by the album’s dull, elevator-music instrumentation. From the opening bars of the album, the music acts almost as if it doesn’t want to be listened to, inviting you to get along with your business and let it fulfil its role as background music. Conventional keyboard riffs and finger picked guitars drudge along in the same-old tempo while the drummer lazily steps on the kick-drum and grazes the snare. At least half of these songs are utterly forgettable – too twee to be enjoyable, and too boring to be twee.
Unfortunately, Somewhere to Jump From doesn’t just commit the crime of being forgettable. ‘Lisa Marie’, far from being straight-up boring, struts out of the speakers like some sort of nightmarish Rick Astley b-side complete with cringe-worthy synthesisers and eighties pop melodies. Its peppy little chorus walks a thin, thin tightrope between being begrudgingly addictive and just fucking terrible –the same tightrope that so much of the album walks. The rot-your-teeth female backing vocal of the title track’s bridge just about comes down on the good side; the embarrassingly sentimental ‘Play The Music Loud’ falls – with an almighty thud – on the other.
Thankfully for us, Aberfeldy do show some genuine flair at times. To take the obvious standout ‘Malcom’ as an example, listen to how they positively rattle out syllables with giddy and impressive flow: “I got sick and tired of trying to explain he wasn’t dying – it was only influenza or a common cold” gets crammed into a couple of high-tempo bars before a quietly satisfying “hey-hey, hey-hey, hey-hey” hook of a chorus – unassuming and gentle, yet impressive and assertive. It’s what Aberfeldy should be doing more of: using the humble production to the song’s advantage and putting their sweetly endearing lyrics at centre stage.
The biggest shame of Somewhere to Jump From is that Aberfeldy often show a strong capability as songwriters despite their failures in execution. Opening song ‘Claire’ is one of the album’s best: a daisy chain of perfect, sugary hooks set to bittersweet storytelling (“Come on Claire, I know that your husband’s in there. Did you tell him about the affair?”); impervious to the destruction of dull production and lacklustre instrumentation. Listening to the rest of the album, however, there is a frustration in knowing that, had these songs had been recorded with a more vibrant production style or performed with more energy, many others of them could be shimmering pop gems also. As it stands, the album descends into vacant mediocrity thanks to the lifeless arrangements with which the songs have been marred. There are some lovely pop songs lurking somewhere in Aberfeldy’s new album – they just need a few cups of coffee to get going.
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