On this second full length release, Geneviève Beaulieu (Menace Ruine) and James Hamilton (Nebris). continue their partnership in this uniquely medieval tinged modernized folk ensemble. Working with a rather Spartan selection of instruments, From The Wells is six songs that at first sound deceptively simple, but are much more layered and nuanced than that first impression gives.
From the first moments of "Edges Nowhere," the minimalist approach is rather clear.Infrequent passages of clean electric guitar set the stage, allowing a significant amount of silence between the melodic passages.It slowly builds, bringing in a tasteful amount of echo and piano before Beaulieu's singular vocals kick in.It takes its time getting there, but it eventually results in a dramatic, but still understated climax before the conclusion.
On both "Gleaming Escape" and the title song, the instant presence of vocals and guitar belies the amount of change and variation that lies just beneath the surface.Both keep their calm, folk tinged sound, but other instruments fill in the gaps, the latter especially showcasing a low frequency harmonium that makes for a strong, but still restrained dissonant counterpoint to the otherwise plaintive guitar and vocals.
Like "Edges Nowhere," "Plenty of my Own" puts the instrumental emphasis on Hamilton's guitar, and here the effect is quite strong, with the otherwise pure and pristine guitar sound having a distorted, dissonant counterpoint that gives a distinctive sound, even with the multitracked vocal performance grabbing a lot of attention.
That sense of building and expanding as compositions also appears rather prevalently on the long closer "Broken Sea".Voices, guitar and harmonium all co-exist together in a subtle performance that builds in strength and intensity, and then retreats, sometimes to complete silence, before picking up again where it left off.Just like the opener, it does make it to a satisfying conclusion, but takes a more hypnotically repetitive path on its way there.
Compared to Pillar of Winds, the only shortcoming of From the Wells is its intentionally stripped down instrumentation.While the duo manage brilliant things with such a basic set of sounds, it is the song to song similarity that keeps the pieces from sounding too distinctly different from one another.It is because of that fact that the songs do not necessarily stand out as distinct from one another as they could, but on the whole the album is a strong one that is riddled with nuance waiting to be examined.
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