Quote cities such as Liverpool and Manchester and people find it fairly easy to rattle off the names of famous sons and daughters in the music business. Challenge them with Sheffield and there aren’t so many obvious answers. The Arctic Monkeys, Richard Hawley, The Human League, Joe Cocker… but you soon run dry. Now it’s time to add another one – Brave New Storm. Well they may not be a household name yet but if there is any justice in the world then the passage of time should soon inscribe them on the role call of luminaries.
This six piece from South Yorkshire is breaking through the soil with unequivocal ideas on how to plough and sow the barren landscape of current music. They appear manifestly confident in what they want to do and where to point their ambitions, and their lavish input and craft should reap rewards. The voices of Siobhan Bligh and Patrick English sensitively embrace their thoughtful lyrics and the effect is underpinned by an evocative string section. Michael Walker’s cello adds dark chocolatey velvet that is complemented by Blai Covas on violin. They provide a warm glister which underpins the delicate atmospherics. Add Matthew Peffers on bass and Thomas Sprackland on percussion and you have 24 carat gold.
Brave New Storm has no intention of jumping on bandwagons or playing it safe. Their remit is to eschew trends and produce a body of work with unadulterated elegance. Their scope appears big and bold and on the evidence to date they are pulling it off. They have fused and melded a diverse variety of influences so trying to pigeon-hole them is a pointless exercise. Suffice to say they are a musical crucible – a Sheffield foundry that has diversified from the traditional production of steel and is now forging artistic innovation. Where once muscle and factories spewed forth ingots from incandescent furnaces these current exponents are creating a new mettle that glows with heart and soul! It is finely wrought work that bears the hallmark of greatness, a rich heroic sound, heavily pregnant with future potential.
The EP ‘Life Trees The Sea’, casts its spell with ‘Life I’, a short seduction of ethereal grace and beauty. It washes in on the ambient sounds of crashing surf before yielding to a lush layering of unaccompanied voices embellished with reverb. It conjures up evocative impressions in the mind, and although less than a minute long the piece beguiles the senses and stimulates the nerve-endings for far longer. It is a brief siren and lures one irresistibly onto the remaining three tracks - a showcase for their prodigious talent.
‘Life II’ is a sensory carousel suspended on the framework of a waltz and kept in time by simple guitar that runs like a skewer through the whole song, while ‘Under trees’ changes the tempo and refreshes things with some upfront drumming and jazzy rhythms on lead that form the basis of a bright little number which still manages to weave in the strings. Not content to take the easy option this track introduces some nice little complexities that keep the listener attentive and avoid complacency. The closing act is the instrumental ‘Bliss’, a simple display of contemplative composition that is probably more an overture for things to come.
Indeed, the parting words of the first song proclaim ‘Well don’t you know how good things come to those who haven’t a penny but have a lifetime to spare’. It would seem good things are destined to fall at the feet of these post-industrial performers. Who knows, they might earn a pretty penny in the process.
Review by Peter Heydon
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