It’s worthwhile comparing Andy Cartright’s Seabuckthorn project with Jerome Alexander’s Message to Bears, reviewed here a couple of months ago. Both are talented guitarists, both deal pretty much one hundred percent in instrumentals, and the music of both is strikingly visual, and even cinematic. However, whereas Alexander’s vision is nostalgic, pantheistic and completely English in spirit, Cartwright’s is bleak, portentous and strongly influenced by Americana. If Alexander’s centre of gravity is some shady nook on the Berkshire downs, Cartwright’s is some gloomy Interstate motel, straight out of a Cormac McCarthy nightmare.
The tone is set with the one-minute, eponymous opener, whose violent, twanging twelve-string guitars evoke the spirit of Ry Cooder’s ‘Paris, Texas’ soundtrack. ‘Across the Rail Line’ continues the unsettling mood, with the harping, insistent main guitar pick suggestive of a mentally-unstable redneck endlessly intoning his grievances against society before embarking on some violent catharsis. The tension is ramped up by the addition of high-end guitars, vocal drones and skeletal percussion that sounds like demons rattling in their chains. The cumulative effect is not comfortable listening, but like a lot of the best music, it fires the imagination.
‘Submerged in the River’ doesn’t break the spell, although it’s a little less inspired. Relying more on traditional lead guitar work and washes of electronica, it doesn’t quite match the intensity and discipline of ‘Rail Line’. ‘Flow of the Floods’ lets in the daylight a little; although set in an uncompromising G-minor, it has an outdoor, everyday beauty. One can imagine this track being used to soundtrack one of the gold-prospecting scenes in ‘Deadwood’. ‘Stopped Time’ returns us to the unmitigated darkness of the opening two tracks, with more thunderous striking of the lower strings of the guitar combined with floating, amorphous electronica.
Seabuckthorn makes music that is not a particularly easy listen, but Cartwright is clearly a clever, penetrating composer, who knows how to hook a listener and then chill his blood. His style is heavily influenced by the American South and West and yet it’s not obviously imitative of anyone else’s work. Another Oxfordshire original, I reckon.