Virgin Passages - 'Mandalay' (Fire) Released 06/11/06

Virgin Passages’ debut album starts off most promisingly, easing itself straight into the ‘twisted folk’ scene currently gathering momentum across the country. ‘Mandalay’ gathers an impressive momentum itself as the three-piece’s jagged melodies and vocal interplay scratch against each other, patching together to form a barbed gentility which can only be described as ‘haunting’.

Early tracks ‘Hate Hate Hate’ and the title song establish a luxurious texture which washes over the listener like the sea, whilst ‘Oh Commodore’ is content to be a beautifully simple song. ‘Memories For Kids’ softly meanders, gently shifting from side to side, supported by girl-boy vocals and underpinned by some arresting percussion.

The English trio’s sound touches upon a number of bands, and you can image a collection of Mogwai, Spiritualised and My Bloody Valentine coming up with something similar if they laid down their distortion pedals. However, as we move further into the album the fact that ‘Mandalay’ is merely a collection of live recordings, four-track demos collated from a couple of EP releases becomes glaringly obvious.

There are far too many moments when the listener gets the feeling that what they are listening to is far from fully-formed. On tracks such as ‘Part Weatherman’ it’s as if someone has slipped into one the band’s practise sessions and left a tape recorder running. When they attempt to turn up the amps, on ‘Headstones For Progress’ for example, the quality of the recording is so poor that the desired contrasts fall flat on their fade, and the result is a muddied and, well, amateurish.

However, that is not to say that Virgin Passages do not exhibit some promise, although ‘Mandalay’ fails to fully realise this. It would be interesting to hear what they can come up with if given better recording facilities and made to concentrate on making all their output as considered as the album’s opening tracks.