The Pearlfishers - Up With The Larks (2007)

After an extended hiatus, Glasgow's the Pearlfishers return refreshed and improved with Up with the Larks, their sixth album for Marina Records - the latest in a line of orch-pop masterpieces. The album is clear evidence that main Pearlfisher David Scott continues his unique musical journey with renewed joy and verve - and that classic songwriting and well-crafted arrangements are alive and well in 2007. Joyous title track, "Up with the Larks" starts it off, rich with lush vocal harmonies, multi-layered guitar texture, the wild jangle of a battered upright piano and exquisite melodic twists and turns. Teenage Fan club's Norman Blake co-produced four of the album's cuts, starting with "The Bluebells" - a beautiful, string-laden rumination on the turning of seasons. "Womack and Womack" recalls Scott's early days running with the hawks of the major music industry and "Ring the Bells for a Day" is complete with the glittering Big Star chime of massed Fender Stratocasters. The Pearlfishers' 2006 Japanese tour with BMX Bandits is thrillingly recounted in "The Umbrellas of Shibuya," a song which references Michel Legrand's classic movie opera, the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but locates itself in a Tokyo rainstorm - with neon puddles, painted in Morricone banjos, Sakamoto synth blooms, Nilsson mouth music and, most tellingly, Scott's truly unique sense of melody and structure. Another highlight is the Randy Newman-esque "With You on My Mind," which sounds like a lost Tin Pan Alley classic arranged by Van Dyke Parks. "London's in Love" could be the theme song to an as-yet-to-be-made romantic comedy blockbuster, set in the "blue black air" of Britain's capital, full of promise and heartbreak. The Pearlfishers, firmly rooted in the classic tradition of three-minute cinematics as pioneered by Webb, McCartney and Rufus Wainwright, reach a great finale with the album's closing songs: "Blue Riders on the Range," a sparkling widescreen epic (sounding like Marvin & Diana doing Ram) and the gorgeous, pastoral "I Just See the Rainbow," which ends the album on an optimistic note.