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We are proud to present our

RECORD OF THE WEEK:

SMOKE FAIRIES – DARKNESS BRINGS THE WONDERS HOME

Track Listing:

  1. Chew Your Bones
  2. Elevator
  3. Snowglobe Blizzard
  4. Out Of The Woods
  5. Summer Fades
  6. Disconnect
  7. Christmas Without A Kiss
  8. Wild Winter
  9. Hotel Room
  10. Strange Moon Rising

In the making of their new album Darkness Brings The Wonders Home, Smoke Fairies drew inspiration from mysteries both real and imagined: sea monsters, flocks of crows taking flight in extravagant formation, strange creatures dwelling in the mud near their new South London abode. With their mesmeric vocal presence and starkly poetic lyrics, singer / multi-instrumentalists Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies embed all that odd magic into songs that speak to the realities of modern times – isolation, insomnia, an overall unease with the state of the world – and ultimately uncover an unlikely sense of hope.

Produced by Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Black Angels, The Shins), Darkness Brings The Wonders Home merges Smoke Fairies’ musings and meditations with a decidedly guitar-driven sound, the duo’s unearthly harmonies endlessly floating atop lead-heavy riffs. Over the course of a rigorous month-long session in Seattle, Smoke Fairies adopted a purposely intimate approach to achieving that singular sonic tone.

An album deeply informed by aberrations of nature, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home delves into a different kind of fascination on Out of the Woods—a song sparked from Smoke Fairies’ study of the overgrown pond behind their house. Another song attuned to the fear of the unknown, the hypnotically ominous Chew Your Bones mines inspiration from the titular beast of Sarah Perry’s novel The Essex Serpent and from a local urban myth involving a character called The Croydon Cat Killer.

For Smoke Fairies, Darkness Brings The Wonders Home signals a strengthening of the inextricable bond they’ve forged through the years.