"Finisterre" and "Unfailing" by The Silver Wye

Long ago, I assume reviewers received platters of vinyl (or shellac) on 7", 10" or 12" size & then played them before writing about what they heard. Nowadays music comes in from all directions and via multiple platforms: what is a "release"

I've actually covered songs which sat on a variety of online perches but not, until now, any which reached me via the medium of Patreon (as far as I can recollect)

However as per my review of the Crypt Session yesterday, the two new songs which The Silver Wye played, namely "Finisterre" and "Unfailing" are just too good not to tell you about.

So you can check them out via: https://www.patreon.com/thesilverwye but Wes advises that he may well stream them elsewhere in time and they'll possibly make appearances on a third Silver Wye EP.

I spoke about how I heard them yesterday played by the duo of Wes Finch and Matt Lakey (though to be fair I've heard "Finisterre" live previously) and was sufficiently impressed that here I am reviewing them for you. However I am not sure the last time there was such a gap between the live versions of a song or songs and what I heard when the recordings came my way.

It's not a quality thing: as I say, the live renditions were very moving. It's partly what Ben Haines & John Parker bring to the songs (and they bring so much) and partly the contributions of Mason Le Long which are so appreciated by Wes that he mentioned them from the stage. He spoke of Mason adding "bells & whistles" which of course is shorthand for the many attributes he offers between the song being recorded and the final master hitting the public ear. And talking of ears, he obviously hears things on tracks most of us can't. His production of "Politics Killer" by Loophole broke records for streaming numbers on the ‘Hot Music Live Presents' Bandcamp platform and he still then remastered it in the search for perfection.

It is so tempting in these situations to name one form "better" than the other and although I have no issues with others having their preference, personally I consider them complementary & refer back to the inherent strength of the composition such that it prospers in various guises.

To me the key lies in the dynamic of The Silver Wye itself. Conceived by Wes back in 2018 as a route by which to explore a more "electronic" side to his songs, the first recordings featured him plus various collaborators who over the years have been replaced by the current combination. This evolution in personnel has had a range of quite subtle effects. The "electronic" strand remains. You can't miss it on the recorded versions of these two songs & given Mason's own experimental work with his band Batsch, he brings continuity to the original concept. Matt also helps here: his guitar treatments actually provide close to all of this aspect when they are playing live.

On the other hand, John is an acoustic musician whose playing anchors Wes into the world he was in before 2018 and which he remains. It also allows him to play traditional acoustic guitar himself in situations like yesterday. Ben on the other hand straddles the two worlds with ease, being equally comfortable on traditional & electronic drums and percussion.

Hence Silver Wye songs now exist in two worlds simultaneously. Or they do in my opinion.

"Finisterre" as it's name suggests, has its genesis in Wes' walking of the Camino de Santiago.

It's a complicated narrative which seems to take in the practicalities of the pilgrimage (no access to barbers), the effects on the walker's mind (not always purely beneficial as the distance takes its toll) which appears to resolve itself into a respectful separation from others on the road while lost in individual contemplation. There is a lot of soul searching (as presumably is intended by the centuries' old tradition) but even when reaching the end of Europe & gazing out on thousands of miles of empty ocean, the song is not bleak as it might have been nor as any electronic over-arrangement might have made it. I think Wes asked himself questions, the song reflects this & if he's answered some but not others or only partially done so, then "Finisterre" is about this resolution or lack thereof.

"Unfailing" is both archetypical Wes Finch in theme and at the same time the more "extreme" of the pair in terms of the production: this is the one which sounded the more different when I heard it. However much he explores electro-sound for the accompaniment, Wes tends not to process his voice terribly much, but here he does as much as I've ever heard him do so.

It's spiritual too I think: a contemplation on the wonders of creation both big & small. Throughout the Siver Wye project, Wes has repeatedly come back to such themes: light reoccurs time and again in these songs and for a while each release was timed to coincide with an astronomical event like full moons. I think what they do in these instances is trying to find ways of expressing warmth which is relatively easy with traditional instruments, using generated music, which too often defaults to that bleakness. If so, then maybe not only is The Silver Wye a quest for using electronic music in this way but also its become a search of how to reconcile two traditions of music (or approaches: has electronic music been round long enough to be called a "tradition"?) "Unfailing" thus comes across as a significant episode in the adventure.