The Diamond Family Archive - Would I Were A Swift (Or A Skylark Be) (2019)

Some albums offer you a direct one-way ticket to a very particular place. Balmorhea takes you to Highway 17 in far West Texas, Erlend Cooper offers a ferry ticket to the Orkney islands, and with the feature-length album Would I a Swift (or a Skylark Be), The Diamond Family Archive takes you directly to a converted garden shed in rural Devon. Albums with this evocative sense of place are the antidote for rootlessness and a stimulus for meandering at the same time.

Originally a limited edition, vinyl-only release with a handmade booklet, unique photograph, ephemera and trinkets, Would I Were A Swift was born out of the imaginings of guitarist and vocalist Laurence Collyer through a varied collection of vintage instruments, the album conveys a sense of wonder through careful layering of sound. In “A Raven,” electronic tension segues to a surprising upbeat refrain via a drum beat riff courtesy of Pete Collis. In “A Radio,” my favourite track on the album, the hellfire and brimstone sermon of a radio evangelist merges with the gentle wheezing of an old mill. The haunting track succeeds in making me nostalgic for a long country walk. Lyrically, the album is alternately easygoing in “Mountain Lions” and melancholy with the “carrion birds” of “Call in.” The sonorous landscapes in the album are unmistakably British and peculiarly beautiful.