Resin Pockets is the first album in a decade from long-running Bristol, U.K. indie group
Crescent, and their first for Domino sublabel Geographic, which had previously reissued the debut album by related band
Movietone.
Crescent's principal member remains singer/songwriter Matt Jones, who co-founded the group during the early '90s and is responsible for most of their material. His brother Sam plays drums and tambourine on the release, longtime member Kate Wright sings on the album's final song, and a few guest musicians contribute wind instruments. Right from the start,
Crescent sound far less abstract and experimental than on their prior works, the earliest of which aligned them with noisy space-rock groups like
Bardo Pond and
Flying Saucer Attack.
Resin Pockets is easily the most song-focused, folky
Crescent album to date, continuing in the more acoustic-driven, intimate direction of the group's 2000s-era releases, but with a much greater focus on Jones' introspective lyrics. His weary, croaking voice (not dissimilar to
Robert Wyatt's) sings of being homesick and helpless, and the music itself is appropriately ragged and shambolic, with lightly fuzzy guitars joined by clacking drums and occasional delicate pianos. Jones recorded the album in Bristol over the course of half a decade, and the album has a very earthy, homespun feel -- some of it was even recorded outdoors, with passing trains and possibly a campfire audible in the background. There's a bit of an aggressive guitar crunch in the middle of "I'm Not Awake," the album's longest track, but Jones avoids excessive noise for much of the album. While
Resin Pockets might sound a bit lazy and very bummed-out at first, repeated listens reveal how much care was put into the album's construction, and it glows with a resonant beauty. ~ Paul Simpson