Having recalibrated themselves somewhat with 2021’s towering epic Burials, Cambridge’s Fuzzy Lights return belatedly with the logical extension that is Fen Creatures.
With Rachel Watkins retaining sole lead vocal and lyric-writing duties, alongside her role on violin, Xavier Watkins (guitar), Chris Rogers (guitar), Daniel Carney (bass) and Mark Blay (drums) continue to turn up both the turbulence and atmospherics, the folk-psych-rock melding appears even weightier and wider in its reach.
Containing songs revolving around themes of ecological trauma, the album is an unwaveringly determined statement as a whole. Featuring Rachel’s delicate tones at the centre and her violin lines often distended into John Cale-meets-Warren Ellis drones, the remaining foursome flesh-out the arrangements with both drama and nuance.
Further in, the ensuing mid-point of “The Promise” rides a more openly Anglo-pastoral melody with raga-adjacent guitar lines and martial drums, like Eternal Tapestry reforming just to play at Cropredy, in advance of the elegiac early-’70s Pink Floydian slow-motion languidity of “Fables Of Beauty”. The edginess mounts again, albeit subtly and steadily, as the up-close intimacy of “Another Eden” undulates out through majestically duelling waves of violin and guitar, that imagine Dave Swarbick having a gentlemanly joust with David Gilmour.
For the closing “Descent”, the sonic torrents feel more foreboding from the start, as preceding threads from across the LP are wrapped around a rolling motorik percussive undertow, ahead of bowing-out proceedings via some wide-screen Bardo Pondisms and rubbery Tortoise rhythm manoeuvres that leaves these ears wanting more. This certainly is a record that doesn’t reveal itself immediately, but once its ambitiously rendered creative arc is identified, then Fen Creatures becomes forty-five mighty minutes to become thoroughly and repeatedly lost inside.-Adrian-
