Iain Archer

Item: Flood the Tanks
Author: Steve Stockman

Flood the Tanks

(2004)

Reviewed by Steve Stockman

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Label Bright Star RecordingsThe Phantom Tollbooth2004

acoustic indie rock singer-songwriter

His first for almost 8 years, it is almost like a debut...and Stocki finds the maturity of this work even more impressive than anything that has gone before...

Flood the Tanks sees Bangor's Iain Archer on the cusp of fulfilling his potential or maybe rather seeing his potential acknowledged. It has been nearly a decade since Radio 1 records of the week hinted at big things but listening to this much more mature work ten years on we can all be thankful that he didn't get pushed down a pop star cover boy career. Instead Archer hid away partly with and partly without choice, discovered himself and how to put his prestigious talents in one focused direction. Not that he wasn't dabbling having contributed to albums by Jacob Golden and Reindeer Section whose driving force Gary Lightbody also enticed him as a deputy on the Snow Patrol beat touring as their extra guitarist and co-writer of the top 5 hit "Run".

But back to Archer and over the past three years he has done what he is best at; spending time in his bedroom with his own little studio. Songs have been written, discarded, rewritten and rearranged before the most careful and drawn out production job has conjured an album that takes the left field experimentation of a Bright Eyes and in best Archer tradition adds this profound accessibility to veer in an Elliott Smith direction and pushes him out towards Badly Drawn Boy and Damien Rice as the best of what our songwriters are doing right now. He has spoken in interviews about wanting to dismantle the song and in doing so he builds up the intrigue. Where he used to prove himself the most finger dancing of guitarists he has learned to rein in his genius to discover riffs and grooves that on repeated listening very gently nocks (sorry for the archer pun!) an indentation in the aural side of your brain. "Boy, Boy, Boy," "Summer Jets," and "I Wasn't Drinking..." are as good as anything on your radio playlists and "Mirror Ball Moon" has a luscious 2 A.M. warmth and satisfied weariness. The instrumentation is done so tenderly; beauty uncovered so delicately for fear of damaging the purity of the song.

Awesome.