The Fierce & The Dead :: If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe

The Fierce & The Dead :: If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe

The Fierce & The Dead (TFATD) can move where ever the Hell they want. As their debut Part 1. showed, they can play whatever they want, too. Part 1. was a monster 18 minute ride that was as much a history lesson as it was an introduction. Full of cinematic sweep and drama, you’d expect the full-length to take that lead and run with it. If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe does do that. And it doesn’t.

Morecambe is briefer than you might expect with track times never approaching marathon lengths. Disappointing or TFATD-lite? Not at all. There is no mistaking who is on deck, and on deck fully, with the first longing strains of opener Flint. Part 2. packs the same melancholy turmoil as Part 1. in a third of the time and carries as much weight. TFATD are still as weighty (and agile) as ever, but aren’t going to be defined by that just as they aren’t going to be constrained by ‘long’ running times.

There is an economy and sparseness to Morecambe that makes what is not being said just as tightly wound and relevant to the tracks as the actual sonics. TFATD don’t sound like Radiohead, but that ‘frugal’ filler free approach calls to mind some of that outfit’s later platters where the empty spaces are anything but. And that certainly doesn’t mean TFATD skimped on their heft. Check the kinetic gallop of Landcrab, a thundering 2 minute noisy blast that sounds like Th’ Faith Healers going post-rock, or the inevitable closing squall of H.R.; contrast that with the chiming accents of 10 x 10′s almost Crimson-like funk or the longing of Hotel No. 6 and it’s clear that TFATD are covering as much territory as they did on their debut.

Daddies Little Helper, with some stellar contributions from saxophonist Terry Edwards, is a subtle reassurance that TFATD’s prog joneses are still in tact. It’s a quieter, bouncy tract that still has that residual longing tied up in it that they work so well. Not so much ‘classic’ prog as classy prog for the here and now. Andy Fox does much the same on a different emotional tangent with Edwards making a mournful, fractured reappearance. It’s a fantastic closer to the disc, collapsing much of the record into a final statement.

Morecambe is unmistakably TFATD in some unexpected ways. To Morecambe or not, TFATD are moving. That seems more crucial than the final stopping point, if there is one, or whether they packed light or not. And far more interesting.

H.R. :: The Fierce & The Dead :: If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe (The Fierce & The Dead, 2011)

:: Guitarist Matt Stevens interview