Modern Hinterland - Diving Bell (2021)

Just a year on from The Longest Part Of The Night, Chris Hornsby, Simon Shippey, Tim Thackray and Colin Marshall return as Modern Hinterland with another collection of melodies warmed by the California sun (even if Hornsby does hail from Northumbria and they’re based in London), their first to adopt a collaborative approach to the songwriting.

It opens with the very specific California (August 16th 1998) a song reflecting on a time when everything seemed to be going well and the future was bright (“Everything could be – Around the corner/Nothing was yet – Out of order”), the title coming from an old photo from his childhood bearing the date, the track, co-penned with Shippey, built upon cascading chords and shimmering backing vocals. The steady slow walk paced I Knew You Well, from whence the album title comes (“You’re a spinning sun I’m a diving bell/We suit each other pretty well”), again with the multi-vocal refrain, has more of a West Coast 90s AOR feel to the guitar work before racing drums lead into the energetically propelled loss-themed No Escape (“I’m heading out to see if it’ll do me good/I’m taking off this black martyrs hood/I’m drinking deep and the bar girl is frowning/She says “’you’re not the only one here who’s drowning…’”) with its persistent nagging guitar riff.

Switching tack, Final Warning is a meditative slow-burn piano ballad that gradually builds in its arrangement to be followed, first by the pizzicato guitar work and lap steel of the dreamy instrumental Good Luck and then, by contrast, the puttering beats and minimal keyboard notes of Hard Luck with its labour-force lyrics (“They say we’re partners, we’re equals…Wearing t-shirts and expensive jeans/They don’t know what equal means”).

As with the album title, mental health forms the thematic basis of the jangling guitars and circling melody of Everybody Better Be Nice Today (“I’m an unlit firecracker/I’m a walking future disaster/I’m the quiet man who asks you/Where’d it all go wrong?”), another echo of an earlier SoCal era, kicking back into the jogging and jaunty staccato rhythm of the similarly concerned Did You Find What You Were Looking For? with its treated vocals and the stark image of “You were walking//Through the forest/Casting shadows/In the darkness/Walking slowly/Taking up space/Not a smile on/Your own face”.

Wah wah effects introduce Where Do You Go? a rockier relationship in crisis number with hints of the psychedelic 60s (and perhaps a touch of The Who mingled with Brian Wilson) the album coming to a head with, first, the brief, atmospheric low key organ-backed instrumental California Redux and, finally again organ framed, the six minute wash of Blue Water, the tide swelling as, featuring Michael Phillips on pedal steel and Georgia Nicholson providing the choir vocals, the song builds to its ebbing away close s a portrait of profound loss – “You called me up and asked I was free/To take a walk down to where the ocean meets the sea/And you’d say this is where we would have brought her/To look out on that blue water/You’d say this is where we would have brought her/To look out on that blue water”. Generally speaking, however, despite coming together under current circumstances, it’s a more uplifting and optimistic album than its predecessor, a call to not waste life “as if everything lasts”, to escape your metaphorical personal diving bell and breathe in the air. “You need me for a heaven that I haven’t got/I can only give you the Earth at best”, sings Hornsby. Accept the gift with open arms.