Thirty Pounds Of Bone - whence, the (2021)

Following on from his album with Philip Reeder recorded live at sea, the Scottish alt-folk artist Thirty Pounds of Bone, otherwise known as Johny Lamb, continues to challenge himself. On whence, the, his sixth full ­length release, he uses Eurorack modular synths as the bedrock for each song, meaning that everything is in the moment, the electronics and drones, variously dense and light, enfolding the guitars, brass and drums. It’s soaked in sadness and melancholy, opening with A Note To Myself, a simple strum, synth swirls and drone, the backdrop for echoey, world-weary vocals about the end of a relationship as he sings how this year is nearly over and “I’m sure you feel let down by living”. This and other songs generally draw on or are inspired by the events at the heart of A Story Of Long, a slow, shoegaze effect stripped down song about watching a close friend pouring his husband a glass of water in a hospice, a few hours before his death, a letting go, brocaded with love and warmed by weeping brass.

A brooding desert noir feel enfolds the steady minimal strum, keys and haunted whistle of the heavenly sung You Made Me, electronics burble and bubble below the surface of But Sad, conjuring thoughts of Vienna-era Ultravox with its fast/slow structure and pulsing percussion, while Descender is a woozy pulsing song of despair (“If you are gone/I can’t go on”).

The Cynical Start to a Jaded Career #1 is again thick with electronics, all hiss and swirl, for a number about how the compromises we make eventually erode who we are, followed by the hushed Sing (“Sing to me please…And tell me I’m loved”) featuring what sounds like a theremin and the quiveringly sung barely-there hymnal vocals of the five-minute This Dog (“How do I know/You’re being kind again?). It ends with the hypermetronomic ticking and pulsating beats of Woodchip, a not as whimsical as it might sound song about an existential crisis (“I always imagined much more than this”) brought on by stripping wallpaper in the bedroom. Experimental but equally delicate and intimate, folk with a cosmic sheen and a human heart, from whence it stems.