Woodpigeon – T R O U B L E

Mark Andrew Hamilton has enjoyed an impressively prolific ten years performing under the sometimes-solo moniker Woodpigeon – but he came within inches of a name-change when faced with releasing T R O U B L E. It’s the seventh LP from the folk-pop project, and marks a major change in structure from Hamilton’s typically bold, baroque measurements.

Inward-looking and self-effacing, with precise, unusual detail, T R O U B L E is a new minimalism for Woodpigeon. An unreliable narrator speaks with a “mortifying” honesty about Hamilton’s recent break-up, and walks the listener through songs of human error and human violence against a flickering backdrop of his recent travels through Turkey and Argentina.

Eerie textures and unearthly, ghostly horns haunt tracks like Whole Body Shakes, with the entire record marked by a softly-spoken but assured departure from traditional pop rhythms. Woodpigeon re-discovers its potential for epic proportions on heart-breaker The Accident, followed by the record’s dramatic blow-out on closing track Rooftops – but, on the whole, T R O U B L E is languorously slow in opening up and letting you in.