Grass House - A Sun Full and Drowning

That novelistic title makes the nature of Grass House’s debut album immediately clear. This is literate, widescreen rock. Indeed, the DNA of the bands they take their influences from is never far below the surface. There have been comparisons to The National and there’s something of the Wild Beasts about their theatrical storytelling. And go back further and the influences are there for all to see: Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen.

These deeply entrenched influences might explain why there’s an assured air to this record that is missing on many debuts, a lived in quality that shows they’ve thought it through. It might also be in part due to the fact that these are new versions of ‘Spinning As We Turn’, ‘And Now For The Wild’ and ‘I Was A Streetlight’ we’re hearing, which adds a sonic consistency teased out by producer Jim Anderson.

Yet, despite their influences it is a record which, in the main, this four-piece from the London-via-North-Yorkshire make their own. They call their sound ‘outsider pop’ and it’s brought together by Liam Palmer’s Nick Cave-esque storytelling: it’s dark, poetic, melancholy and always compelling.

Their artwork and videos show that nature influences every aspect of their music (indeed, the word ‘wild’ is used in two track names). And the sound they create is a glorious and brooding storm. It’s melodramatic, swirling and occasionally psychedelic, Palmer’s lyrics riding on waves of cinematic guitars, dramatic clouds slowly formulate and roll ominously across the skyline.

It starts with ‘Spinning As We Turn’ bruised, gothic and bluesy and it sets the template for the rest of the album – ‘don’t dwell upon the pain, it will go’, it sagely notes. There’s a tenderness and sensitivity as well as darkness. ‘And Now for the Wild’ with its mentions of Icarus and the line ‘the world will make a cuckold of us all’ continues the theme of survival – this time in the face of the destructive nature of, er, nature.

‘The Colours In the Light May Obscure’ with its kaleidoscope tumbling piano is beautiful, while ‘I was a Streetlight’ is both poignant and anthemic and the song where their infatuation with Americana comes most to the fore. The almost funereal ‘Tasteless and Taciturn’, meanwhile, is a heartbreaking meditation on getting old that swells and swells. Yet, it’s ‘A Thousand Generators’ which is the stand out, sounding like it could be on The National’s ‘Alligator’. ‘Let us howl, let us howl like a thousand generators’, roars Palmer as he loses it like Matt Berninger on ‘Mt November’. It seizes the moment perfectly.

The sincerity of ‘A Sun Full and Drowning’ means it feels too bombastic sometimes and it could do with a bit of levity at times but that will come. For now you can lose yourself in their eerie autumnal majesty. This is an album with ambition; a sonically sweeping piece of work with big themes and big ideas that can overwhelm you. Just let nature take its course.