I’m very aware that I’ve been absent on here for some time and particularly lax with any music or beer content. This is purely a headspace thing: this has been an eventful year and my personal ecosystem has suffered at times because of it. But one of the reasons this website exists is for me to do one of the things I love doing: writing about music and beer and, often, an intertwining of the two. Plus the artist featured here included a note with the LP expressing curiosity as to what beer would go with it, and so it would be churlish of me not to put the work in.
Henry Parker featured on here previously with a very fine debut album and follows in fairly rapid succession with a follow-up. Lammas Fair is a very beautiful-looking and rich-sounding LP – the moody, monolithic doom-folk cover (and gorgeously 70s typeface) would have made it an insta-buy even if I didn’t know what it was. It’s a shame my turntable is currently disinterested in functioning correctly, but the beauty of Bandcamp is the included download in pristine digital clarity.
The late-60s / early-70s folk revival inspiration is still here as per the first LP, and I’m still in awe of the richness of HP’s chord voicings. One of the reasons I have so many guitars is the fun of playing with tunings, but I’m a beginner as compared to this; the sound is as complex and meandering, yet inviting and comforting, as the rugged English landscape it evokes.
The instrumentation has opened up somewhat since Silent Spring; the opening title track’s full-band sound evokes (for me) a touch of Fairport c. 1970, and I can hear little textures from what sounds like a Rhodes at times. Theo Travis – a name I recognise from my beloved Steven Wilson records – drops by with flute. The prog-guitar soundscape on Brisk Lad sounds like much of the rest of my music collection, but fits exquisitely here.
Stylistically this is something I can very much relate to: a very fine balance between tradition, folklore and contemporary expression, with a sound that feels very familiar yet urgently “now” and undated. There are songs I know from other settings (Death and the Lady takes on the most grim and solemn arrangement I’ve heard of it, likewise Brisk Lad) and new, clever compositions from the man himself. And as an audio nerd, the production is clean, warm, simple and very, very nice.
I try not to try too hard with pairings – being too contrived can take the fun out of anything – but in any case I had something to hand that I was certain would work, and it did.
Tynt Meadow is the only English Trappist beer (there are only 14 Trappist monasteries worldwide producing beer), first appearing in 2018. I’ve had numerous Belgian Trappist beers over the years and have a carefully set-aside reverence for them; there’s something wonderfully pure and uncomplicated about them, yet they represent the pinnacle of the craft of beer making.
Tynt Meadow is (I assume) the newest to join this illustrious company, but has already become a personal tradition of sorts – I buy it at some point late in the year for consumption over the winter holidays (it was a Christmas dinner beer in 2018 for me, and I can confirm it’s a great companion for that occasion). Admittedly I’ve cracked it slightly early for the purposes of this post, but I couldn’t imagine a better fit for this record. It’s tastefully anchored to tradition yet new and with new purpose. It’s wonderfully English and bucolic but concerned with the world surrounding it. It’s strong and robust at 7.4%, but exudes that undefinable sense of “fireplace” comfort, with a colour that evokes vintage mahogany furniture. It just works.
The Ale Album 