Sparrow and the Workshop/ Crystals Fall

Sparrow and the Workshop
Crystals Fall
(Distiller Records)

I tend to get grumpy with releases that are simple re-hashes of earlier EPs, with a couple of token new songs thrown in for justificatory purposes. However, seeing as I have missed all of Sparrow and the Workshop’s output to date, that would be mere churlishness on my part. Thank you, Distiller Records, for bringing them to my attention. Thank you from the very bottom of my heart.
This lush and lovely album is brought to you by a three-piece that sound like the set-up for a bad joke – a Scotsman, a Welshman and an Irishwoman walk into a recording studio, and you get? The best album I’ve heard this year, that’s what you get. Vocal duties are shared by Jill O’Sullivan, who also features on guitar and violin, and percussionist Gregor Donaldson. O’Sullivan’s delivery is reminiscent of Feist, but so multi-dimensional and beautiful a voice can only be diminished by the ‘sounds a bit like…’ comparisons – she has the purity of First Aid Kit harmonies, the passionate intensity of PJ Harvey, the wistful yearning of Emmy-Lou Harris, the occasional Karen O edge, and yet sounds only like herself.
The instrumentation is deft; full without being overstated – what I’ve come to think of as ‘The Decemberists Approach’. The album flits from jangly Americana to rebel-rousing sea shanty, undertakes a seriously folky flirtation with the soulful ballad, and sporadically reveals its seedy post-rock underbelly – the most successful genre-hopping seen since the last Yo La Tengo album. Impossible to pick a favourite track yet, but there isn’t a weak song on the album. Welcome this band into your life with open arms.