Album Review Willis Earl Beal - Noctunes

Both Willis Earl Beal and his morphing, hypnotic brand of lo-fi blues are truly indefinable. The accompanying write up for his latest LP ‘Noctunes’ makes this crystal clear; it outlines his many “births” and “deaths” that he’s had in his career through snippets of his life and beguiling quotes. These “deaths” include being discharged from the army - and perhaps most revealing - ending his contract with XL following recording the expansive ‘Nobody Knows’ album, which was plagued with him drinking “in the daytime, crying, then I’d go downtown. The police would bring me home in the morning.”

To say that Beal’s life has been turbulent is clearly an understatement; and it is obvious that his musical career has been characterised by constant reinvention. Whereas ‘Nobody Knows’ had pop-flecked soul tunes with big choruses and radio-searching hooks, ‘Noctunes’ is almost the complete polar opposite. The album flirts with ambience to create a - once again, impossible to define - concoction of sombre synths and truly haunting vocals. The instrumentation is sparse, sometimes even very hard to find in the breeze of reverb and atmosphere, creating beautiful but equally eerie sounds that cannot be pinned down. ‘Lust’ for example relies on just background noise and plodding acoustic guitar; ‘No Solution’ features melancholy strings and Zen synths and ‘Say the Words’ introduces drums, but only through the occasional tip-tap of snare drum or chiming ride cymbal.