The album was recorded at Edinburgh’s Happiness Hotel studio with Song, By Toad’s Matthew Young, as well as a cast of supporting musicians, and back then we mentioned how Separate Lives was only half of what emerged from those sessions. Far from being b-sides or off-cuts, the other songs formed their own LP, a sister record titled In Monochrome that in many ways builds upon and surpasses its sibling.

It’s worth once again stressing the collaborative nature of Fair Mothers. Through Esther Swift (harp), Sam Mallalieu (drums), Pete Harvey (cello), Faith Eliott and Dana Gavanski (both vocals), and Johnny Lynch and Faith Eliott (both screaming), Allan found ways to lift and expand his music, the supporting collective there not to merely reproduce his ideas but shape and enhance them. Young too played a role at this level, having a direct creative impact and arranging the various elements into their final shape. That the result is so moving, so personal to Allan, is a testament to the organic and intuitive nature of the whole experience.

Because In Monochrome is Keith Allan’s record. His most idiosyncratic, and his best, inspired by his own woes and joys and his particular fascinations. It is of little surprise that isolation is a key theme. The alienating fact that we are separate from one another, never quite able close the gap, and the small moments that reinforce or transcend it. “It was Camus that did for me,” Allan explains:

After I finished [The Stranger] and experiencing insomnia and hallucinations, I reached this total clarity where I knew that I was a separate entity from my body and this immediately blew quite a few fuses in me. I disappeared… and when I came back I knew that everything was connected, was really one thing, but at the same time was nothing and didn’t really exist separate from me. I didn’t know how this could be, or what I was, and above all, how could a boy from Fife possibly have this Zen experience?

This question lies at the heart of the Fair Mothers sound. The intuitive connection of disparate elements, the loneliness and the strange comfort, the kernel of irresolution at its core. In Monochrome feels like the most direct confrontation yet, delving further than ever into the dark and the strange, even if no answers are ever forthcoming. Opener ‘Magic Bullets for Dracula’ duly delivers, dreamily sluggish drums dragging everything forward with an undead lurch, the sad piano always on the verge of fading out into nothing beyond the ambient stillness of an empty room.

This combination of melancholic and eerie is woven into the fabric of the record, as is a grab bag of influences ranging from Neil Young and Stephen Malkmus to the haunted compositions of Prokofiev. Nowhere is this clearer than the sprawling ‘Birds and Bees and Tiny Fleas’. Opening with a wry pessimism that brings to mind Benjamin Shaw, the songs makes its bitterness clear with the repeated refrain of “we are mostly fucked,” before slowly morphing into a languid folk song that’s altogether more wistful. But you have to consider all of the elements to really appreciate what the track achieves. The foreboding guitar lines and peculiar modulated vocals, the near classical crescendos, the field recorded bird song, insect clamour and static-crackled radio transmissions. If the Fair Mothers style is a patchwork, then this is the track which finds it at its most intricate and seamless.

The poltergeistic turmoil of ‘Harpy’ shivers with anger and regret, a demented quiet that plays out behind closed doors. There’s a Lynchian quality to the song, and indeed the record as a whole, as though the melancholy is a curtain behind which older things lurk, benevolent and malevolent both, ominous shapes that sometimes leave an impression through the fabric. ‘Unwinding Road’ is perhaps the most overt reference to these forms, a heartbroken piano ballad concerning the forces that compelled William S. Burroughs to kill his wife, as told in the aftermath. There’s no going back through the curtain, yet the other side is always just there, always moving.

“In Monochrome really signals a search to regain contact with feeling,” Allan says. A lean into the veil, an attempt to bury one’s face in the fabric if only to sense what moves beneath. The title track presents the experience in all of its bittersweet beauty, pressing through the numbing buffers of time and pain and cynicism to one ground zero amongst many. “The lyrics are the most honest of all on the record,” he says, concerning “the fiercest argument I had with my wife, where we had to face the potential ruin of our life together.” What is on the other side might not be good, to feel its presence in no way productive or healthy. But there is something there, and it is still moving.

In Monochrome is out now via Song, By Toad Records and available now from their Bandcamp page.

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By some miracle or black magic, the albums are coming out on Song, By Toad Records, the Edinburgh label that ceased around eighteen months ago after releasing some of our favourite Scottish bands over the last decade. Indeed, it was a support slot with one of those bands, Meursault, that saw Allan meet Song, By Toad’s Matthew Young, the latter offering an afternoon at a recording studio. Somehow, this escalated into an ambitious twenty-plus song project involving a musicians from Scotland and beyond, resulting in Separate Lives and a second LP as well as a series of accompanying singles.

“We got the core of all those songs in just the one afternoon on my acoustic,” Allan explains, “but it was cold that spring and I kept gravitating over to this squeaky old black piano next to the stove, which relaxed me and all these new melodies began to come out […] They kept turning into new songs that we kept on recording whenever and however we could. And it’s grown into this fantastic big project, involving some really wonderful musicians.”

So far two singles from Separate Lives have been released. A duet with fellow Fox Food alumni Dana Gavanski, ‘Rainfall, Canada’ is a slice of swelling melancholia that balances stark beauty with a kind of world weary self-deprecation. The tone is therefore plaintive yet not quite tortured, some small wick of amusement burning, no matter how black the humour. Think somewhere between Malcolm Middleton and Jason Molina‘s acoustic stuff—beat down yet still breathing, unsure whether to cry or to grin should help arrive, or the worst happen.

This time featuring Faith Eliott, ‘Undone’ is cut from the same cloth, though something in the sound is brighter and a little more hopeful. Like the wistfulness of early mornings, when one’s problems have not deserted them but at least sit still enough to seem manageable. Where sadness can come to have its own curious comfort if only for a little while.

Separate Lives is out via Song, By Toad Records on the 14th February and you can pre-order it now.

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Today marks the fifth anniversary of Fox Food Records, and to celebrate James Smith has gathered a large number of the label’s artists for a special compilation, Something’s There But You’re Not Sure What. Essentially a who’s who of the Fox Food roster, the release represents a celebration of what truly independent labels can offer—a diverse group of people from all over the world linked not by a specific sound and style but rather the spirit within.

Opening with an acoustic version of Oh Rose‘s ‘Prom’, Something’s There But You’re Not Sure What features a whole host of our favourites. Nice Legs stop by with another slice of delightfully warm fuzz pop, Spartan Jet-Plex provides an alternate take on single ‘Meant’ and Monarch Mtn returns with his characteristically intimate and melancholic whisper-folk.

Dana Gavanski joins Kaiya Cade on the haunting ‘Garden’, Fazed on a Pony serves up a dose of wonky nostalgia and Goodbye Max welcomes us back into his wistful warmth with the modest wonder of ‘Search Party.’ Then there’s the icy pop of Bloodhype, the whimsical momentum of Plant Food, not to mention the playful hush of Lewtrakimou and cool swagger of Saint Charles. Mixing things up, Henoheno and Fair Mothers offer different takes on patient, sprawling music—the ethereal gloom of the former matched in mood and scope by the foreboding creep of the latter.

Elsewhere, Unisex offer a carefree sway with ‘Let the Tide Take You’, Fairy Godmother a garage rock washed with dreamy haze and the likes of Ratbath, Hairpins, Suzy Jivotovski (of GRNDMS) and Deer Scout all provide stellar examples of intimate bedroom folk. Then, in a fitting finale, Smith’s own Good Good Blood teams up with Astral Social Club for mammoth closer ‘Heathen Astronaut’.

With ambient textures and electronic beeps and glimpses of sincere emotion peeking through the fog, the track acts as a kind of summary of the compilation and therefore the Fox Food Record’s mission as a whole. Heartfelt, experimental, bound not by expectation or convention but rather some gut-level intuition. Together, the elements coalesce into an intangible yet sustained sense of spirit, something far more powerful and lasting than anything done alone. This might not be something than can be adequately put into words, but that it exists is a testament to Smith’s judgement and effort. Because something is there, even if you’re not sure what.

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Take for example Friends For Equality, the benefit compilation in support of Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU and Planned Parenthood put together by Nancy Kells and Fox Food Records. Collecting the talents of 42 acts, the release features a diverse range of unreleased tracks from all over the world, including WTD favs such as Henry Demos, Henoheno, PAT MOON, Rainwater, Francie Cool, Lewtrakimou, Slumbers and Monarch Mtn, not to mention songs from the creators themselves in the form of Spartan Jet-Plex and Good Good Blood. As you might expect, it’s also a great way to discover new artists, and while there are too many to write about properly, there’s enough variation in style and genre to ensure every music fan will find something to their liking.

Not content with the compilation, Nancy is organising a benefit show at Strange Matter in Richmond, VA on the 17th February, and working to put together a zine for which the theme is “social justice/civil rights – so anything related to that – drawings, photographs, comics, editorials, poetry, short story, etc.” Submissions are currently open until the 2nd January, so email spartanjetplex@gmail.com if you want to participate or help in any way.

You can buy Friends For Equality now via Bandcamp, and be sure to remember that the $5 price tag is a minimum suggestion (and impossibly generous for 42 tracks). Equally, if you don’t have cash to spare, you can help by spreading the word or getting involved (just contact Spartan Jet-Plex via the email address provided above).

Artwork by Ryan McCardle

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