The Gentle Spring - Northernhay The Gentle Spring

Skep Wax are proud to present a second album by The Gentle Spring. Michael Hiscock, co-founder of legendary indiepop band The Field Mice, along with his new cohorts Émilie Guillaumot and Jérémie Orsel have created an album that combines wisdom, wistfulness, reflections on love and celebrations of community - all threaded through a set of songs whose melodic power and sheer catchiness recall The Field Mice at their best.

The music is more upbeat than on debut album Looking Back At The World. The shimmering acoustic guitars and sinuous bass are still present, but this time Michael’s and Émilie’s voices are accompanied by drums and percussion. With this new recipe, the songs sometimes remind you of early Microdisney, and sometimes The Pet Shop Boys, with deadpan, considered, unvarnished, but deeply emotive human vocals, and an insistent rhythm that drives on regardless.

The album title, Northernhay, is a clue to the inspirations that drive the songwriting. It is the name of a winding street that led from the Croydon suburbs where Michael lived as a kid, leading out to a wilderness, surprisingly close to the city, where foxes are seen, where the streetlights don’t penetrate - where you can get lost: one of those places where you first discover that the world is awesome, mysterious, deeply romantic and unknowable. The track We Let Our Feelings Show picks up directly on this reminiscence. It’s the celebration of the early days of forming a band, The Field Mice in Michael’s case, where he and a trusted friend first realised that you could capture some of the romance, mystery and awesomeness of the world in song. A blissful, exciting time, beautifully and sincerely rendered. Northernhay is very good at reminding us of the joys and of the freedoms that we start to take for granted - these songs are able to access the wonderment that we first experienced when we were young. The Second City is another song that achieves this. Hometown Croydon, sometimes dismissed as a mere suburb of London, an adjunct of the fashionable capital, is celebrated as the place where the magic began. A place where books and records could be found, creative friendships forged, and freedom discovered. It’s a sincere tribute to those uniform new towns and mundane streets where most of our creativity is born - the backwaters are where most great songs are written.