Arctic Reviews

Wes Finch stares out from the cover of his debut CD with the visage of a man with the world on his invisible shoulders; it's a luddite expression mirrored in the ambience of the almost bygone tones of Wooden Hill (Intro). Bearded and evidently out of love with the very essence of this twenty-first century, his world weary delivery is reminiscent of that found on breeze-block 78's, and all that's missing in this briefest of openers are the hisses and pops of ancient vinyl as he twangs like a backwoods 'shiner who's just lost his favourite dawg.

Finch is not a son of the Appalachians, but of Coventry, however whilst it's most famous musical denizens have preferred to confront racial prejudice, Asthill Grove promotes a far more rustic set of archetypes. Along with collaborator Paul Hartry and an ensemble cast of sundry pluckers and blowers, his subjects are from a different age, such as the storyteller on "Ain't We The Lucky Ones", one intent on telling his audience to celebrate the little things, sagely musing "Ketamine's for horses son; pills are for the sick", to a backdrop of bucolic guitars and hazy, dappled banjo sunshine. The duo and guests are patently fond of the instruments of some unidentified throwback period, one of flutes, mandolins, upright bass and the like. And the result is a swell of uncomplicated warmth and honesty.

Critics might argue that hirsuteness and cabin fever is now little more than a Bon Iver shaped cliche, but there's more than enough charm here to disarm them. With it's citizenship of scrumpy and rye supping hedonists, these gentle drunks can be found going down to the river with a "Couple of cans", banjo toting Mummers-in-denial for the Facebook generation. This search for absolution reaches it's climax on The New Waltz, Finch chanting provocatively to a lover past their sell-by date "Glory, glory, hallelujah/I'm looking right through yer, tell me what am I to yer/When the truth comes stumbling home". If English folk is unable to escape the event horizon that is Nick Drake, it can still conjure up it's beguiling failures. On Asthill Grove, Wes Finch fills our boots with the spoils of England's green and peasant land.