Peter Broderick - 'Home' (Bella Union) Released 27/10/08

At first, ‘Home’ might make you check the credits on the album cover. It’s difficult to shake off the feeling you’ve heard this stuff before, even though this is Broderick’s first solo album proper after a handful of instrumental releases and playing in a bunch of bands in his native Portland, Oregon. Serene, immersed with an air of near-tangible longing, fond of fingerpicking and multi-tracked vocal explorations, averse to loud noises, unfamiliar with any form of aggression and comfortable with lengthy silences, we’ve been in these silent regions many, many times before, starting with the stoned desperation of uber-hippie David Crosby’s 1971 masterwork ‘If Only I Could Remember My Name’ and ending with the backwoods break-up blues of Bon Iver’s much-acclaimed ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’.

Allow it a while to take a hold, though, and ‘Home’ soon develops a winning personality of its own. The hushed templates may have been mined near to exhaustion, but Broderick’s way with a tune and particularly his gift for moulding something subtly grandiose from a sparse assortment of low-key elements ensures the proceedings resonate long after the last delicate pluck of a guitar string fades into the ether. ‘And It’s Alright’, for example, spends the first third of duration being exactly what it says on the tin, alright, nothing more, nothing less; worryingly close to the commendable but slightly beige background music provided by melancholy folkies ala Jose Gonzales. Then, just when you’re tempted to switch off, maybe get on with the washing-up you’ve been putting off for hours, Broderick’s multi-tracked, choral layers of vocals (how he managed to get this far before putting this remarkable instrument to use is an absolute mystery) sneak in, transforming a humble little fingerpicker into an impossibly beautiful, sweeping hymn, with wave after wave of heavenly harmonies oozing from the speakers. It’s a jaw-dropping, shiver-inducing moment, one that Broderick matches with impressive ease throughout the album.

It’s often impossible to decipher what’s cooing on about, but the best of these quietly mournful tunes are capable of moving even the iciest of hearts to stunned silence regardless of whether the listener knows what the songs are about. In many ways, especially when it comes to both album’s prevailing mood of hankering for a home (Broderick relocated from the US to Denmark, where he’s put in active service as part of Copenhagen’s dream-pop collective Efterklang), ‘Home’ echoes Songs of Green Pheasant’s inexplicably overlooked 2007 opus ‘Gyllyng Street’. It’s doubtful whether Broderick’s familiar with the criminally obscure Pheasant, but the more expansive tracks here – ‘Sickness, Bury’, in particular – recaptures that lost gem’s air of wind-beaten desolation with equally heart-breaking results.

There are hints of early folk-goth epics of Gravenhurst here as well, especially when ominous organ notes surface to pepper the proceedings. Even when Broderick reverts to more conventional folkie singer-songwriter mode, as on the Bon Iver-hued ‘Not At Home’, the album retains a strong sense of identity and, most crucially, its singular mood of melancholy displacement that demands and rewards repeated listens.