THE FAMILY MACHINE – HOUSES THAT YOU LIVED IN (Beard
Museum)
There’s a moment listening to the gorgeous “Quiet As A
Mouse” when we realise that it sounds like something from a vintage Oliver
Postgate TV show. Listen to that
wiltingly simple vocal melody and those urbanely bucolic drizzles of guitar,
and couldn’t this be what Gabriel the Toad might sing if he had to explain
something intangibly complex like regret or absence, instead of hot air balloons
and sharing? What makes this album
beautiful is not just the lovely sound – although the sound is lovely, from the 60s soundtrack horns
and Bacharach bass of “Long Way From Home” to the Golden Syrup Abbey Road warmth of “Morning Song” –
but the way that the deftly constructed miniature songs seem to say a lot about
huge topics in very few words, like indie folk as written by Saki. Or Yoda.
The key concept that resurfaces throughout the records is
home, whether as welcoming shelter after a hard journey or as mute witness to
painful absence: the title track could easily be a rewriting of Philip Larkin’s
“Home Is So Sad”, over a melancholic melody that somewhat recalls early 90s
R.E.M. It’s not always easy to hone in on what specifically these allusive
little songs mean, especially “We Ain’t Going Home” which simply repeats its
title in reverberant harmony like the world’s most elegant footie chant, but
perhaps they are not supposed to be tied down.
Most great pop music is brash and cocksure, but The Family Machine’s
intimate intricacies are more haiku than high kick, and should be cherished as
amongst the county’s very best.
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