Diamond Family Archive

I am busily compiling my best of 2007 list for this blog, and the diamond family archive's Pear Tree is definitely up there with the best of this year's releases.



~"it's strange how we listen to songs of love and hate but we don't hear the love songs until it's too late" (Pear Tree)



Trance-like and intimate, folksongs for darker hearts, Laurence Collyer's mesmerising live performances are hard to translate to record (and this is his third album this year) but on Pear Tree they do. Chilling evocative lyrics coupled with a droning countryfied guitar and assorted accompaniment, this is DFA's finest recording yet. Imagine how Bob Dylan and the Band might have sounded if they'd been holed up in a cold drizzling English countryside with only bottles of cough syrup and Lou Reed's Berlin LP on constant rotation. It's that good.

This CD, like the previous DFA releases, is only available in extremely limited numbers from the superb Woodland Recordings label. It is destined to be a classic, if only anyone gets to hear it.

Two songs below, one from Pear Tree and one from the album shared with the excellent The Great Park from earlier this year.

• Diamond Family Archive - Runaround Sue mp3 (from Pear tree)
• Diamond Family Archive - Hateful mp3 (from WR001)
  

And if you want more Lawrence, get the fab new Blanket album.

~"I'm sorry for all of my mistakes, but why can't
we talk of something else, something beautiful, something outside of
ourselves...

We could always stay close, close enough to reach
each other's throats..."

(Making friends)