In a recent video, Guillemots lead singer Fyfe Dangerfield and drummer Greig Stewart play live "in a little woodland, by a disused railway line" in north London. Wrens and robins chirp. Standing against a graffiti-emblazoned gray brick wall, the scruffily bearded Dangerfield strums an acoustic guitar casually, almost haphazardly. Stewart, wearing a pair of white-rimmed shades you might see on one of Biff's henchmen in Back to the Future, runs his drumstick along the bars of an iron gate-- gently, almost tenderly. Dangerfield's formidable falsetto soars through the space's cavernous reverb, dexterously communicating heartache. If you're in the right mood, it can be powerful stuff: an affecting mix of traditional earnestness and experimental impulses.
This uneasy balance between balladeer sentimentality and avant-garde adventurousness runs through the Guillemots' discography. On 2006 debut Through the Windowpane, which earned the four-piece a Mercury Music Prize nomination, these competing urges resolved themselves gloriously in songs like fragile opener "Little Bear", romantic ode "Made-Up Lovesong #43", and northern soul shimmy "Trains to Brazil". But 2008's Red meandered through ambitious yet unremarkable Britpop. And Dangerfield's 2009 solo nod, Fly Yellow Moon, suggested the band's schmaltzy side had conquered all. Never mind that Billy Joel cover: Walk the River shows Guillemots still have a few eccentricities up their sleeves, though they remain a long way from their mid-2000s peak.
Guillemots' third album is mournful, lushly arranged, and conflicted as ever about whether it wants to be singer-songwriter comfort food or forward-thinking pop. The song from the video, "I Don't Feel Amazing Now", feels overdone, muddling its unspectacular, melancholy lyrics with the full studio gamut of strings and choral backing vocals. But first single "The Basket" is a lot more effective, simultaneously a cryptic love song ("You knock me over/ Come on and do it again") and a propulsive, kaleidoscopic assault on a culture where there's "a masterpiece that no one bothered painting/ Everybody's too busy with those baskets of theirs." Think of a grown-up Supergrass (there's theremin). The ominously ornamented title track is a sample-ready testament of survival, while the electronic sunshine of "I Must Be a Lover" offers a needed break from all the gloom.
For a band that once stood out for its too-much-ness, Walk the River now gives us too much of the wrong things: too many midtempo songs, too many minor-key acoustic strums, too many codas that outstay their welcome without really connecting. But Stewart's bustling drum work, MC Lord Magrão's rippling guitar, and Aristazabal Hawkes' sensuous bass-- even Dangerfield's supple voice, which might suit the band's namesake seabird-- ensure there's something interesting happening beneath even the most mawkish sentiment or the baggiest quasi-epic. Just not always something particularly new or vital, the way Through the Windowpane and its predecessor EP felt. That woodland video comes closest so far, so maybe the fresh air will do them some good.
