Ian Roland & The Subtown Set - Double Rainbow (2020)

Based in Brighton, alongside guitarist frontman Roland, the Set’s completed by Simon Yapp on violin and Brione Jackson (who’s since moved from Brighton and been replaced by Jade Woodhouse) on cello and harmonies, alongside drummer Nick VanVlanderan and this, part-produced by Nigel Stonier, is their second studio album (there’s also a live one and several EPs) but the first to be credited to the band as such.

It’s a decidedly pastoral sound, opening with the gentle walk along rhythm of The Valley, looking to a prospect of hope in an environmentally troubled time, and following on with Butterfly, a song about both Roland’s walks with his children around Kew Gardens and memories of his own childhood, climbing trees in Mayow Park, the oldest municipal park in Lewisham.

Nature continues to rear its head with the lilting melody of Songbirds, a seize the day number showcasing Yapp’s fiddle with Jackson on harmonies, the musical mood expanding as drums make their presence fully felt behind the fiddle and soaring vocals In The Darkness, singing of the transitory nature of life, a gathering urgency that spills over into Colour Me In, again a call for green shoots to resist the gathering grey, and Searchlight with shades of Jeff Lynne to the strings on another number about trying to recover what has been or is being lost (“Neighbour saw me searching late at night/Said what you looking for? You gave me quite a fright/When I could get the words out I was looking for my soul, said they’d lost theirs a long time ago”).

Jackson takes prominence on the opening to Human Too, an allegorical number which uses the image of shopping trolleys interlocking to speak of the need to start talking to one another again, before scampering drums and fiddle join the chase. Things slow down with the more shimmery and lyrically upbeat Shooting Star (“Annie stood up smiling, her spirit standing there/The lights of love and laughter, all came rushing back”) only to pick up the pace once more as it heads into the final stretch with the tumbling melodic cascades of Day Became You, again about awakening to see what’s around us, and the lively, dance-floor rustic mosh of the similarly themed Gravity Inside (“the moon shines brighter, knowing you’re near”) that gives Yapp a full head of steam.

Calling to mind the promise after the Noah’s flood, the title track closes proceedings in a more subdued but gently rumbling style, returning to the natural world imagery and the underlying environmental messages, the cello burnishing the rhythm as Roland splashes colours across the sky, running to catch the treasure at the end of the rainbow and “bring it home to warm the coldness there” as it ends with he and Jackson unaccompanied on the line “the Earth cried save our souls”.