Fences - FAILURE SCULPTURES (2019) Hi Res

Unfamiliar with Fences, aka Christopher Mansfield I could be forgiven by taking the visual and assuming what I was going to hear matches up to the image of the man himself. Instead within seconds, I realized I was not in Kansas anymore, a melodic, emotive range of songwriting flowed across the headphones immersed in soft poised vocals that told a story beyond the lyrics itself.

What you get is a beautiful collection of melancholy, heartfelt songs that envelope you in an instant, hard to remove yourself from the deep intrinsic stories, you simply get swept away within the melodies and easy on the ear songs that resonate across the album. Like many of the modern day storytellers, capturing life within three minutes you could find comparisons in the likes of Passenger, or Damien Rice with soulful immersive songwriting, yet Fences delivers his songs in a personal way that resonates with the listener in an equally intimate way.

The haunting methods to record the instruments, fused with the impeccably delivered vocals create an almost cinematic landscape in which the songs are laid out bare before the listener ready to consume. As raw a recording as you will hear all year, Fences has created an immensely personal and reflective recording that will please many who warmed to his earlier work, yet Failure Sculptures harnesses all that he learnt along the way and boldly delivers it yet again through ten sublime tracks.