On this, their debut album, Call To Mind are nothing if not transparent in their debt to the textural haar of Sigur Ros, going so far as enlisting the Cairn String Quartet on a handful of cuts. It's a disclosure as refreshing as the bulk of the music herein, which oscillates between mere prettiness - neither Passing Drumochter nor Over The Machair truly gets off the ground - and skin-prickling pulchritude, as with the orchestral thrust of Breathe, A Family Sketch's smouldering skies and the lissom metamorphosis of Untitled. Might this bent for beauty be related to the quintet's roots in Ardersier on the Moray Firth, within spitting distance of some of Scotland's most alluring landscapes? There's evidence throughout to support such an argument, so riven is the album with a measured, painterly grasp of mood. One such exhibit, January (You Are All I See), wastes no time in plunging you deep into the rage of a Highland winter, rendering you snowblind. Compelling, convincing and, despite its title, colourful in the extreme.
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