Proving that Americana is less music from a place than a sound in its own right and that country rock can be found in, perhaps, the most unexpected places, UK outfit Laurence O ‘n The Blistered Mirrors has always had a way of sounding as if they have been transported from another time and place—perhaps the California of the early seventies as the Laurel Canyon, singer-songwriter boom was slowly giving way to a more band-driven scene.
“Like an Autumn Dream” perfectly balances those two sounds: understated and delicate yet driven and energetic. Gently rock-infused, it gathers around it some smart sonics, and ebbs and flows on a raft of hazy harmonicas and wandering fiddles, raw guitars, and country vocal textures, but also nostalgia and poeticism, deftness and dynamics.
People often see Spring as the time when the world comes alive, but it is Autumn when the year really begins, at least for those tied to the land. The harvest is in, the land starts the period of rest and renewal, and now we look to the cycle to begin again. With it, our thoughts turn to what has gone before and what may lie ahead for us. It is then that we truly find ourselves on the cusp as one world fades away and the world prepares for another to be ushered in.
“Like an Autumn Dream” is a song of landscape and memory, and a gorgeous one at that.
