Eve Appleton Band - ‘The Way Up Sky’ review
Bristol DIY scene legends Eve Appleton Band’s new album ‘The Way Up Sky’ releases today on Below The Belt Records. Featuring stunning strings, powerful instrumentation and a great vocal performance, the album crafts a beautiful musical landscape. ‘The Way Up Sky’ begins with Eve's vocals being left to do their thing - instrumentals make way for her voice to do the work. It's a short (but grand) piano ballad to take you into the higher energy of the rest of the album.
Following is Like Alice, with a storybook melancholy and frequent reference to the titular Alice. In combination with the aching strings, it draws out sympathy even as it takes the energy and tempo up. Good Stupid Sheep maintains the pace, and much of the lyricism paints a picture of chaos surrounding the sheep, drama once again being injected with the strings, coming and going to whisk you into the unfolding narrative.
‘The Way Up Sky’ album cover
The theatrical energy these songs introduce persists though a lot of the album - talk of angels, fairies and tornados don't just bring out a sense of wonder, but a feeling of the external acting on the poor sheep. Just as you piece together the lyrics the instrumental bridge carries you back into a sea of emotion, and for the rest of the song the violin and electric guitar wind around each other to intensify it all - bringing up feeling of lost control, confusion and self-doubt.
'Bite the fruit and kiss the fairy,
How clever that you let her pull over your eyes'
Little Boy introduces itself alongside Eve's deep tones, which, sitting over the calm drums, evokes the feeling of missing something that hasn't completely gone yet. This track plays with tempo and stereo sound to make for a fantastic headphones-experience; the chaos of it captures the fleeting parts of childhood, and the climatic outro makes you pause for enough time that the crash of Only I's first few notes breaks your guard.
Only I offers itself as a soft space to wallow and contemplate, just as the second and third songs did, but the rise and impact of its second phase brings out all of the emotion you can attach to the song, whether you like it or not.
As mentioned, the album makes sure to often give Eve's voice the space and focus that it deserves, and Squished Bird is no exception - but I feel the live band shines especially here, with the rising and falling mood fuelling the narrative just as much as the cutting lyrics.
Two Fawn, Forlorn is soft and vulnerable, and is possibly the best example of how well suited the song titles are to their contents. Eve's voice in tandem with the acoustic guitar and violin are lulling and tragic, and it all becomes all too crushing as the electric guitar sadly floats in over the top of them. Yet again, the stereo sound makes the song feel spacious and present, although it might not be everyone's cup of tea.
Jesus Christ... Jesus Christ, Girl somehow manages to deliver on what every prior song has been promising. Having talked a lot about how well this album builds, rising and falling, I was praying that the ending would be as impactful as what I was imagining. Not only does this song fulfil that wish, it contains everything positive from the pevious songs wrapped in one, so I can't wax lyrical about it without boringly repeating myself.
Eve's vocals, the crashing drums, the winding strings and every part of the arrangement have their time, but come together seamlessly and gracefully in an impressive, tragic, awesome finish to a collection of journeys which left me deep in thought. The rise in her voice at the end pierces the veil and takes you to another new height that you don’t realise you hadn’t already reached.
The feeling of the storybook is ever present on ‘The Way Up Sky’, but as the album keeps moving, you feel less like the reader and more like a character within it. That sympathy which Eve brings out from the beginning is turned backwards, towards the listener, and her words extend an olive branch straight to you.
As the second half of the album rolls in and continues to build this world, the band balance tempo and pace really nicely - at multiple points, where I felt that a song might begin to drag, the instrumentation took a different emotional turn. Within individual tracks, the stories feel whole, but the album also gives you time to breathe and wonder, before it takes you back up again. There is something pleasing about how subtly some instrumentation comes into the mix, it all feels so gentle, even at the most climatic moments.
If you enjoy a strong narrative, this album will be a feast for you, but likewise its emotional depth and softness will no doubt touch a lot of listeners, old and new. This is a project that I can see having a very wide appeal; the build of these songs have such emotional weight and technical strength, they remind me of rock hits, film soundtracks, folk stories and jazz cacophonies.
If you don't listen to much folk-adjacent music, or much with live instrumentation, I would highly recommend this as an opportunity to tap into a new musical space. As a first time listener of The Eve Appleton Band, personally I’m hooked.
‘The Way Up Sky’ is out now on all platforms