Crayon Fields
All the Pleasures of the World
(Chapter Music)
All the Pleasures of the World might be mistaken for a sunny album title if the irony wasn’t so immediately apparent. If Crayon Fields were fist-pumping hedonists, drinking deep and smashing vases as they ate goat’s cheese and enjoyed sex with multiple partners on marble-tiled balconies—then we might believe the title expressed some deeply-held ethos of animalistic indulgence. But for a band like the Crayon Fields, who catalogue the many pitfalls, intoxications and woes of love for the modern, mortal, civilised gentleman, such “pleasures” are often stymied, out of reach or merely utopian.
Versions of these pleasures come briefly, singularly and memorably. They can sometimes be glimpsed—elsewhere, once, later, before, not now—and All the Pleasures of the World is a record of someone’s constant striving after those potent moments: the lure of love and its pleasures is strong enough to pull all of these songs into its orbit. It’s an album full of winsome longing, the wish to regain the innocence of experiencing something remarkable, before the events that followed, before the bitter fallout overpowers the sweet instant. “I still want impossible things,” Geoff O’Connor sings here—things like experiencing something again, for the first time.
The stings and hurt of unrequited feelings certainly run deep, but the lasting impression of Pleasures is one of bittersweet restlessness and frustration; so much that is so good (“pleasures”) is within reach, but it is mostly pushed away by our actions or by those that we, unfortunately, love. And yet we persist, failing, hoping, overcoming—O’Connor longs for someone to rescue him: “take me where the light isn’t cruel”. That the underside of love is never ignored by Crayon Fields—the wry humour of “Disappear” suggests the happy illusions of rose-tinted glasses and delayed realisations of honeymoon periods—is what makes them a band worth returning to, a band worth spending time with.
Thankfully, Pleasures makes that an easy thing to do. It rewards attention. Unlike many pop bands that get stuck in merely aping certain sounds and eras with a few perfunctory words on top, there’s a genuine depth here in both the reflections on life and the sounds that travel with them. The album builds upon the songs captured on their first album, Animal Bells. Where the indie-pop sound there felt sketchy and a little hesitant at times, Pleasures finds the band much more ambitious and confident.
There are influences here that expand the range from the original canon of twee-pop-approved acts heard in the production of Animal Bells. The bold, distinctive rhythms of blue-eyed soul, R&B, calypso, flamenco and even disco give the songs a muscular centre. Around this swirl a variety of string and synth arrangements, spot-on guitar hooks and idiosyncratic flourishes (wooden blocks, layered harmonies). The guitars sometimes strum and jangle, but often they’re locked into the rhythm, accentuating and syncopating the beat (see the excellent “Mirrorball”). It’s a sound at once halting and graceful, providing blends of comforting tones from practically every post-WWII genre of popular guitar music.
The many names that one could invoke as inspirations are less important than the way the Crayon Fields now craft their material into wonderful pop songs. The awareness of traditions is never so reverent as to stop them crossbreeding—to wilfully pleasurable ends. With the album clocking in at a shade over thirty minutes, Pleasures is expertly honed by a band that knows how to be economical and concise. It’s easily one of the best albums of this year.
Ben Gook