We Are Muffy, The Charcoal Pool, 2018

Album Review

By Henry Lipput

The sounds of We Are Muffy's sad and beautiful album The Charcoal Pool could have come from a weathered farmhouse in the north of England but, instead, were recorded in a former suburban double garage in the by-the-sea town of Cornwall, England. But nature still intrudes and is heard from birds like crows, robins, and seagulls as well as the rain on the skylights in the studio.

We Are Muffy's harmonies are by Nick Duffy of The Lilac Time and Angeline Morrison of The Ambassadors Of Sorrow who take turns providing lead and backing vocals. And the newly-written but old-fashioned sounding folk songs are played by a wide range of interesting instruments like lyres, music boxes, cutlery, bottle tops, and broken china as well as autoharp, banjo, and double bass. The whole feeling is one of the songs being played in that far away, aforementioned farmhouse in front of the hearth or in the local pub. 

Although the weather isn't mentioned much, in songs like "Milk Bar" and "Strange Admixture" there's a sense of overcast skies. In "Milk Bar," someone is advised to put on their Duffel coat to go and see if the local milk bar is open. There's also a trip to the observation lounge at the local airport to watch passengers leaving on an overseas trip. And then there is a lyrical detour with "Give your blood away in pints like the bottled milk on your doorstep."

Nature is very much a part of "Strange Admixture" sung by Morrison with a voice that recalls the legendary English folk singer Vashti Bunyan. It's also a love song that compares one's love of nature to the love of a person: "Bright are the stars in the sky / As bright as your eyes / If you squish blackberries they'll stain your fingertips blue / Seems everything I see reminds me of you."

In the title song, Morrison sings, "All that summer my dreams were strange / Stranger still was the dark, dark water." She gives the end of the lines a vocal downturn that gives the song a dark feel and adds to the eerie arrangement. And in the subdued "Coloured Pencils," a child is asked to use art to brighten up a world that has only milky tea and instant coffee to drink at meals. "All there is to see /  Nothing else to see," Duffy and Morrison mournfully sing.

But rainbows do appear if only on the mouth of a child eating a bag of frosted candy. "Frosted Candy" is an out-and-out pop song with its joyful "Bah Bah Bah Bah" backing vocals and handclaps. Hearing this song, you can imagine the sun shining, if only for a moment, through in a gap in the clouds.

The Charcoal Pool is out now on Tapete Records.