Linden Pomeroy – Remien Vigilia

Ramble

Linden Pomeroy is one of those figures that’s fairly well-known to a small cabal of folk in Worthing, West Sussex.

Worthing is a funny wee place — nominally a Tory stronghold (boo) but there’s a community of people doing banging stuff very much at odds with the surface perception of the town. For all the foreigner-bemoaning blues there’s a seam of decent, queer-friendly weirdos doing their thing without waiting for broadsheets to declare it the next hipster enclave.

What better setting to make a record of plaintive bluesy acoustic guitar pieces? Pomeroy’s previous stuff — and full disclosure, I played violin on a previous record of his, Spirit Replica, in 2018 — is closer to a kind of noisey tape underground vibe, all soft edges, drones and soundscapes. The surprise of Remien Vigilia, such as it is, is that Pomeroy has turned off the pedals and echo in favour of a single guitar.

The sound is distinctly American Primitive — think Bert Jansch, John Fahey, etc — but there’s no shortage of guitar vocabulary he’s borrowing from outside weirdo folk. “Under The Blossoming Tree” makes extensive use of some clean strings and some horizontal scraping of the strings — bringing in a third harmonic layer to the music, pitched much higher and at odds with the main harmonic figures.

Elsewhere on the record — and perhaps most noticeably on “Spanish Full Step” — there’s a trick of using abrupt time signatures, ending the bar on an odd number unexpectedly or adding a beat. I’m reminded of something I saw on telly several million years ago, one of the UK blues revival bands talking about playing with one of the original bluesmen, and the bluesman says “how many bars are in twelve bar blues?” The band answers, “uh, twelve?” and the bluesman replies, “there’s as many bars as I say there is, motherfucker”.

That is to say, one of the worst things about using blues and folk traditions is the idea that they’re ossified, paralysed, strict forms which can only be done the ‘right’ way. What links Pomeroy to the American Primitive ideas is the disregard for orthodoxy. Plenty of off tunings, slack drone notes, very idiosyncratic time-keeping, etc.

Worth saying that it’s by no means a showy-offy record — these are arrangements bulbous with care and attention, but also with an ear towards appealing to a broader audience than his previous noisy business. For all the idiomatic guitar vocabulary, queasy bends and odd timekeeping, these are lovely wee miniatures of melodic blues numbers that you might want to stick on when you’re driving with your Ma.

Also worth adding — this is the kind of record that would’ve drowned if the recording wasn’t exquisitely crisp and clear; all the creaky in-room sounds and fingers touching string sounds are left in — it’s intimate but transparent, and very much matches the live Pomeroy experience of the last year or so.

In conclusion then — this is a record that very much should be heard outside of Pomeroy’s environs and that means it’s time for you, dear reader, to go and buy this hecking record.

-Kev Nickells-