northerner: end of the holiday

Martin Cummings, aka Northerner, debuted in 2008 with There'll Be Other Holidays and ten years later returns to similar themes with his third album for Home Assembly, End Of The Holiday. Influenced by travels through the Catalan region of Spain, the album finds Cummings at his most reflective and sonorous. The electronic ticks of his earlier I Am On Your Side (2012) have been pared back somewhat but instead fit neatly in and around his expressive guitar playing. It's hard to talk about a Northerner album without mentioning Vini Reilly. The shadow of the Durutti Column guitarist hangs softly over the eight pieces here. The opening track "Principi" sets the tone with gliding atmospherics, exquisite arpeggios and understated beats, followed by the sweetly melancholic "Final D'Estiu" which ups the tempo and beefs up the rhythms until "Dijous", with its shuffling "bossamba" flow, cements the album's Balearic appeal. But there are other influences at play here too; something of Emeralds guitar whiz Mark McGuire can be heard in the intricate guitar embellishments and cavernous, brooding tension of "Nomes Jo". Elsewhere, the dusty bump of "Una Nocio" conjures up hazy memories of early evening, poolside liveners and the widescreen ambience of "Arribant Al Final" could be the soundtrack to an arid coastal drive. But before one starts getting a bit too holiday brochure, End Of The Holiday is an album for reflection, for change, an all instrumental ode to half-remembered summers, a sound collage of a faded July postcard, and a reminder of warmer climes, long summer days recollected fondly, as autumn slides into winter. Edition of 300.