Right from the beginning of their second album,
Any Light
, it's clear that
Loving
have moved on from the home-cooked, lo-fi baroque folk sound they had cultivated on their first record,
If I Am Only My Thoughts
. There, the duo of
Jesse Henderson
and
David Parry
imbued their quietly melancholy songs with more intimacy than almost seemed possible, as they gently strummed and drummed while singing quietly enough that even the air around them was barely disturbed. Here, the opening number "Any Light" has widescreen layered acoustic guitars framed by sweeping strings, strident piano chords, keening slide guitar, and a vocal that cuts through the mix with crisp clarity. It's a fitting preview for a record that finds the duo looking outward rather than inward, and the big, almost cinematic arrangement and production suits them well. Of course, it's not epic like
Celine Dion
is, but compared to what they were doing before, it's quite the jump. A good comparison might be how
Iron & Wine
moved from home-recorded albums to those made with increasingly larger bands and production values without losing the heart and soul that had been baked into the music from the start. Despite the clean sound and expanded instrumentation, there's still plenty of wistfulness, resigned ennui, and low-key bummed-out feels to be discovered amongst the slow country-rock ballads that creep like a slow tear down a cheek ("To Turn"),
Donovan
-esque songs that tread lightly across the meadow ("Medicine"), or tracks that have the frozen beauty of a late-'60s
Beach Boys
instrumental ("The Light in You"). The result is by no means sunny; as the melancholy starts to stack up on song after song, the feelings wash over the listener like a slowly roiling sky full of big grey clouds. It's kind of blue, but it feels nice all the same. Mostly because
Henderson
Parry
don't make a single false move anywhere on the album and have concocted a listening experience that's lush and enveloping while still being scaled to a regular-sized human experience. Most important of all,
is filled to bursting with the kind of restrained emotion that draws people in, eager to console and comfort the broken souls making them music while trying to extract a satisfying amount of those very things for themselves. It's a neat trick that they pulled off on their first album, and anyone who fell in love with that will likely feel the same once they give this one a spin. ~ Tim Sendra