Fermenting for over six years, Scapa Foolscap began as a series of rough sketches initially inspired by the shipwreck-strewn waters of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, understated soundscapes that gave Pumajaw’s vocalist Pinkie Maclure plenty of space to explore as it slowly evolved into the duo’s eighth album.
The introspective spookiness of “The Smell of Trouble”, retracting on a planktonized half-light. A whispering presence, akin to one of Piano Magic’s finer moments, fairytaling the fabric in digitised droplets and simple words apparitionally smeared in cushioned recoil and transposed shiver, John’s duetting gravitas imaginatively gluing you to its sticky momentum.
A strange alchemy that’s quickly replaced by that bluesy bruise of vocal that Pumajaw are renowned for. Operatic blooms, that counterfoil in the husky sulphurs of “The Innocent Win”, smokey luminals underlining the lyrical flow, hugging the intrigue with octave shifting dexterity. A Marlene Dietrich-drenched melancholic that “Michaela” picks up on, gathers around it in a swaying skirt of concertina and glittering harp. A sorrowful lilt I could easily imagine animating the floating hands of the cover (by Stefano Piacenti) and that kelp-like sway of eyes… the dusky palette too, one that could so easily tango with the moody atmospherics contained herein. A slow saturation the addictive danceables of “Local Envy” pulse clean away, with hiccupped glitch and organ stab in a sure-fire contender for my early musical highlight of the year. A pin-bright jewel that gets the hips swaying in a ransom of electro beats and ghostly owls, its fractured narrative waltzing, oozing with a divine sing-ability. A teasing flavour that juts up against the bubbling fairground of “Mirror Of The Other”, a track that dives straight into the dirgey slant-o-tronics of yore, its repetitive richness further furnished in the duetting depth of special guest Adrian Crowley and an organ’s under-creep.An experimental shift that opens out to the seductive richness and skittering colourisations of “Caramelised”, another album highlight that sees Pinkie’s voice spectring the goods. A sultry stretch of words puckering the concertina’s slide and felted percussives as the narrative burlesques in and out of focus, and phrases glitch then texturally disperse into the song’s fabric. A sensory experience that melts in there, turns like a cream-filled spoon on your lips, which leaves “Silky And Tar” to look out from a café’s rain-soaked window with a distant sigh — an oily nostalgia nibbling on backward loops and circling crows.
Pumajaw have crafted something rather special here, a mercurial bewitchment that lingers with you, reminds you what it means to be human.-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
