A dozen quiet, questioning songs full of gorgeous melodies and harmonies.
“Some Other Stories” is the second album from South London duo Crew and Palmer, who are life partners as well as musical ones, and they each supply songs written individually to this 12-song project.
Six songs are credited to Palmer and five to Crew. Palmer’s composition ‘Winning Ticket’ opens the album, setting the mood of quiescence and calm, with lyrics full of resignation: “those who are desperate to win are destined to lose”. He also penned ‘Close The Book’ (“a guilty man who takes the stand to make his last request”), which benefits from contributions on cello by Ben Handysides, and the philosophical ‘Blindly Through The World’. On that song, which is set in a minor key, Palmer ponders “bitter harvests and hatred buried deep” as people grow and “try to make a mark” in their lives.
With Palmer chiming in with harmonies on the choruses, Crew contributes ‘Take a Picture’, singing of “a new fragility” and “wanting to feel closer” to the man she loves. She also takes lead vocals on her song ‘Look Back on Before’, a pretty melody which anchors a reminiscence of what could be old diary entries or poems (“ideas from 20 years ago”, “this personal archive in a drawer”), and the toe-tapper ‘Count Down the Days’ (“lose them one by one”), which features a bright guitar solo.
The influence of Elliot Smith, particularly the song ‘Say Yes’, is clear on ‘Unspoken’, where Crew’s voice is double-tracked to emphasise the “vulnerability, a fear of letting go” she feels. ‘Making Lists’ is a finger-picked acoustic track which is the duo’s version of ‘Que Sera Sera’ (“what will be will be”); it encourages the listener to “float above all this uncertainty” and achieve “some small sense of peace”. That last line could be an alternate album title.
Many of these songs ask direct questions in a musing fashion. One of them, ‘Storm Rolling Through’, is the album’s centrepiece, a metaphor of heartbreak full of dams and defences breached in the face of a flood. ‘Oh My Darling’ leaves its own killer question, “will you come along?”, to its final line, after Palmer spends four verses remarking on the passing of time and whether there are “strings left untied…knots left undone”. ‘Our Captain Cried All Hands’ is a traditional ballad which is given a folky feel by the duo. It takes the form of a farewell to a lady that leads to “briny tears”, and it contains syncopated lines and an uneven 7/4 time signature. There is a fiddle solo from Basia Bartz and a final chorus featuring, appropriately for the song’s title, members of Palmer’s old band Great Days of Sail. The Palmer-written waltz ‘Give a Little More’ closes the set with some advice (“you can’t keep on taking without putting in”) that he laments is nonetheless “unheeded”.
This is a winter-warmer of an album, which gives the listener much to ponder about, with the music always an ideal bed for the lyrics.
