Shadowfax are a Force of Nature
By Keir Nicoll
So, there is this new and old band on the scene, called Shadowfax. They are breeding a breed of song that is drawing from the great-old mythologies and folk tales of the past. They speak in internal rhyme and alliteration and seem to know their stuff. They reference the musical Orpheus and Eurydice, great figures of Greek mythology that are mentioned by other bands of the immense Canadian tradition, amongst others.
Cheekily described as “an alternative folk band that emerged from a pure white egg floating on a bed of seafoam in the Aegean Sea,” they are obviously playing with poetic nuances with a refreshing tongue in cheek approach. They are currently based in Vancouver, BC. Their instrumentation includes the pedal steel, banjo, trumpet and trombone and, as they note, the occasional theremin. These instruments are the stuff of the folklorique tradition and also bring in a modern twist, especially with the eccentric inventor's instrument. They describe their music as being “straightforward yet...deceptively complex, utilizing diverse arrangements and counterpoint.” It sounds as though they are drawing upon the classical oeuvre and canon at large. Including influences as diverse and almost oppositional as folk ballad, bluegrass, shoegaze and bebop, they are playing music from oeuvres that highlight the instruments that they have in the band. Only with these selections can they play such a panoply of sound. They just released their debut album “Orpheus” and invite you to get lost in the web of the “spider silk bonnets''.
“Ferns” is the first song on the album, which opens with a classical bluegrass treatment of the violin and banjo, soaring and plunkin' along. This continues as lead-singer Jeremy Fornier-Hanlon comes in, to chide in the disappearance of the trees for lumber. He asks to be laid down where one day, a sapling will one day be a tree. He seems to have an amorous feeling for the forest. The perfume of blossoms fills the air. The violin and banjo are strident and strongly plucked. The images of the environment drying-up are interlaced with his physicality also doing so. “As wild ferns/We will return/And we will live on/Through the land,” is the refrain that takes out the song, as they obviously compare themselves to the flora of the landscape.
The next song begins with Simon Posluns wispy pedal steel guitar, as more metaphors of the sun and clouds, the rain and trees and weather in general, entwine with memories of a lover-gone. “Stars and Shells” shines about the face of the moon and the song that 'you're still singing'. There even seems to be a low-key inclusion of the theremin in this song, in the background, along with lowing gang vocals. “A shadow encased in a shroud,” is what he begins to see everything through. The referencing of Orpheus and Eurydice out of the celestial nature of lovers is in kind mention here.
“Salome,” telling a tale, is brought in with a bebopish trumpet by Thad Bailey- Mai, that carries over the strident-strummin' guitars. He is a singing about a temptress named “Salome.” It's a song of sin and lust. Prizing your precious soul is the thing to do in the face of this siren who is calling for your immortal being, in this song, in which the vocalist wails over crying keyboard organs, climaxing in Michael Wadham's drum-solo. Effective use of the “femme-fatale” version. Vivacious hips and horns in this song bring a velocity to the momentum of this song that is really felt as “Salome” is described in full! The trumpet bebops and brings the song out in a final and fatalistic-sounding fray.
A lowing upright bass opens this next song, with a wooing vocal sound, as lyrics of “tossing and turning” bring in the sweet tension. “The old once were young,” reminds us of ages of love and lives lived. The river flowing until its end and the ivy grows and wends its way as the song does. The children ask what the man is slumbering for, unseen and unknown. The man of the song's title, the “Slumbering Man”. The image of a Rip van Winkle who goes on sleeping, while the rest of the world, wonders what he is doing. The strings plunk over this section beautifully, as the bow of the violin finds outside and harmonic sonorities and then bends into the feel. It flutters like the breaths blown from a sleeping mouth. Then swoops down into dreams. The trumpet and trombone come in for a strong showing after the keen strings, with a diminished feel. More balladry from these bards.
In their single “The Inferno,” the guitar rings in with a clear chiming sonorousness and holds throughout the whole song. There is a clear environmentalist bent to the song. The lyrics are strongly relatable with the feelings of many from this part of the world who fear for mother earth in danger and keenly feel the threat upon her soils. They are in keeping with the teachings of lyricist like many in Vancouver and on the West Coast who are of this environmentalist awareness. The timbre of the singer's voice is pure, remote echoy and full. Their use of falsetto is a yearning and heartstring-pulling sound. There are very clear poetic images used throughout the song, “Fragile Life So Fleeting/Forestry Receding,” and “Ancient trees are falling/industry is calling/we're crying for help/we brought this on ourselves,” that leave little doubt for what we are being called to notice in their words. There is also a solid, quietly, subtly distorted guitar solo, courtesy of William John. There is hope for a better future included at the end of the song. It is clear that they are trying to create, or participate in, a mythology of the West Coast that is still ongoing here, as it has been for the past number of decades, or even millennia.
Then, “Darkness Fell,” intros, with a simply strummed chord progression, followed by a lilting guitar-line, that sounds of the old folk canon. A country vocalist follows over the pedal steel. Memories of things being calm, over a creek. A woman, “looked into your eyes and then she asked if she could stay, just a little while so she could make amends.” It's a murder ballad in some kind of way, as she stabs and kills her sleeping king. Woeful “Ooh aahs,” follow, as the memory of the stolen soul escapes. More lap-steel ensues as the chord strumming brings the song forward into a more uplifting section. The myth unfolds into the spilling of more blood but there is an acceptance of this having happened, from the darkness in your hand. It seems a metaphor of evil in this song. The vocalizations of the singer continue to describe the “Darkness tried to hide away,” as the girls said grace. For the peace of mind for which you yearned. A life lived in evil, yet wishing for a pretty grave. They're telling a story of an awful tale, yet wherein some redemption is sought for. Can this be gained? The song slowly plays out, as the question lingers.
The ending song “The Vagrant” is about a man out for ten years, “destined to roam, from the hills to the sea-to-the-sea,” and drinking alone. More of the usual sin of existence, coming from the drink. They reference “Smuggler's Bay,” where they drink and shoot, mentioning local places of the same kinds of names. “From campfires to ashes and blue skies to rain,” the question the nature of existence in the weather again, as the poets have been for ages. They have found their home in this place of the West Coast in their lyrics again, although this could be a wandering 'vagrant' of any place, really. He is a “ghost of a man,” who needs it the most, while he is 'out to sea', so to speak. The descriptions of place are as beautifully-wrought, as they are throughout the rest of the album. The appreciation of nature, in which the home of his road, is set, is full throughout. The song is taken out by a nice violin solo outro.
This album is full of such lilting grace that it throws into sharp relief the environment from which it is birthed, like the gracing mother whose features are so well-defined in the rainforests of BC. The metaphors that are drawn from the Greek mythology and place, are well suited for the beginning of the appreciation of the nature that surrounds us in this place.
As Shadowfax impart us with the shadowy imprints of their sounds that they reveal to us a new poetry from the old of this place, as the student of local poetry will understand, there is much to be learned of the landscape of this place. The placing of the individual within nature in BC is not necessarily romantic but it may see them as participating like a small granule within the great immensity of wilderness that is here and also entwined into it, like the vines that grow of from this place. To wander here is to be free like few places but it is also to be lost and the cost of living in sin or in the preservation of this wondrous land are choices to be made. Shadowfax invites you to contemplate them in their songs.