Les Étoiles’ first release for three years, Your Roots, Your Bones is an EP of sonic minimalism, beauty and honesty. Dwelling on Les Étoiles’ familiar themes of memory, homecoming and loss but also hope, sadness and the end of sadness, Your Roots, Your Bones comprises four tracks that condense and deepen Les Étoiles’ concerns to date.
The title track, like Les Étoiles’ LP To Leave A Mark, considers the relationship between a home town and those who leave it. New Eyes is joyful: “You are already loved by us all”. By contrast, in A Spell of Disenchantment the mood is bleak – “you have found the place, but cannot find the moment”. And yet: “Not another sad lament” begins the closing track, accompanied by pattering house drums; some things “make up for the rest”.
Sonically, the palette is austere but expressive. Soft guitars, delicate drums, mallets, the characteristic subtle production of echoes and pans combine with field recordings – a steam train, an untuned radio, distant pealing bells.
One for those nights closing in.
The cover photograph, taken by Lisa Hostick, is from a series of pictures of the same winter scene.
Produced and mastered by Tim Wright.
For fans of Low, Talk Talk, Scott Walker, James Blake.
Track List
- 1. Your Roots, Your Bones (4.18)
- 2. Old Photograph (2.32)
- 3. New Eyes (3.46)
- 4. A Spell of Disenchantment (3.50)
- 5. A Good Remembrance (4.33)
