Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Even the most resolute of performers who prefer to stand and create within their own company, must at some time feel the urge to collaborate. No person is an island, so the saying goes, and we learn, we find novel ideas, we have fun and enjoyment in the camaraderie of others, and in the end, even if we return to the studio alone, our thoughts will be of the time when those Pale White Branches on the tree of life showed the beauty of ornate arrangement and the flowers that come with teamwork and the cooperation of the seasons.
For Andrew Howie the uncommon foray into the field of collaboration pays out in dividends, the branches become cultivated, the buds of future progress are considerable, and yet the listener must never forget that the music that Andrew Howie has created is in itself one of the robust and convincing of music pursuits, and so to collaborate with anther is the act of doing oneself a favour, one of attributing your mind to theirs and by a form of cerebral osmosis, bring to life a piece of art that would have otherwise laid undiscovered.
In the wide range of subjects tackled by Andrew Howie, the aftereffects of a prison sentence, the struggles of care within the NHS, Scrabble and the death of a child in a playground, what comes across is the sincerity of voice, a production founded on honesty and insight, and as vital tracks and instances such as A Follower, A Fighter, Patrick Station, Drip Feed, the heart-breaking What If My Best Isn’t Good Enough, and Madeline, Andrew Howie, along with Lucy Cathcart Froden, Phil Wilkinson, Lewis Gordon, Tim Davidson, Graeme McKerracher and Iain Hutchinson, capture a side of life none of us truly are able to explore without finding a sense of shame or fear at our response.
Not just intriguing, but insightful, not only beautiful, but hauntingly spectacular, Andrew Howie’s Pale White Branches offer a colour and fidelity to the craft, this is the music not just of a musician in the prime of his career and output, but of a spokesperson for a generation saddled with the burden of observing all they knew turn to dust, and who offers hope, the tools, to rebuild.
Andrew Howie releases Pale White Branches on August 13th via Autoclave Records.
Ian D. Hall