Admiral Fallow – The Idea of You
Glasgow's Admiral Fallow release their first album in six years, and it's full of wonky rhythms and charming broadside ballads
Glasgow's Admiral Fallow are nobody's idea of prolific, but this band could be your life if you're an acolyte of masterful musicianship, mosaic melodies and literary lyrical intrigue. As accomplished musically as they are economic and understated, Louis Abbott's band could be Scotland's best since The Delgados.
With an unchanged line-up, Admiral Fallow recorded their first album in six years back in 2019 and sat on its quiet storms as the world changed. Now The Idea of You has peered above the parapet and sent its woodwind, wonky rhythms and charming broadside ballads into the fray. 'I'd never seen anything quite like those shoulders before', sings Abbott on the wonderfully woozy The Grand National, 1993 and Admiral Fallow give up their secrets in a slow coach home of heavenly harmonies and a languid chorus to die for.
It's not all laid-back and lilting: Dragonfly motors along like Belle and Sebastian listening to Can, Tuesday Grey has a twitching urgency to match its intimate details and The Possibility races itself all the way to the end of the taut tale it tells. Closer Soliton is a mini symphony in blue and the melodic fingerpicking on the sublime Sleepwalking will break your heart.
Listen to: Sleepwalking; The Grand National, 1993