Rejoice! the Smoke Fairies are back! After a tour in 2015 with Public Service Broadcasting (and their vocals on The Race For Space album) there was the highly regarded seasonal LP ‘Wild Winter’ and then silence. Now we have the release of a superb new single ‘Out Of The Woods’ with an accompanying video and the hope of more music to come.

With a confident guitar figure in the introduction this track has that brooding, relentless feel of the best of their work, including a lyric loaded with threat and ambiguity, ‘….. Like the tangled roots I grew into you…. in winter’s mires you burn your fires…and you burn me too…’.

Every element is in place; the verses are heavy with melancholy and questioning but it is the harmonies in the chorus that really drive the track along ‘….Out there in the trees…the branches moving…I want to follow you but you cut your path straight through me…’. Sparsely arranged to focus on the hypnotic guitar and unadorned drum beats this distinctive folk-rock soon has the listener under its spell.

The video has the duo playing guitar and running through London Docklands and Epping Forest while a semi-mythical figure blends with the boughs lit only by the occasional sunlight through the trees. All very atmospheric and mysterious, reminiscent of cult eighties movie ‘The Company of Wolves’, illustrating the light and dark of the track perfectly.

https://smokefairies.bigcartel.com/
https://cambridgemusicreviews.net/2015/04/26/public-service-broadcasting-corn-exchange-cambridge-25-april-2015/