Having delivered two spellbindingly stark yet snug albums in slender and spaced-apart fashion through the form of 2023’s Evensongs and 2025’s Collodion, with a combined running time of forty-six minutes over seventeen tracks, Andrew Rumsey almost doubles the dimensions of his standalone catalogue with the faster arriving sixteen-song, forty-minute Blank Arcades.
This doesn’t denote the delivery of a bucolic Albion answer to the Minutemen’s Double Nickles On The Dime, but it does represent a subtly looser and broader approach to open up his song world, whilst crucially not overextending nor cluttering it.
Accompanied again by David Perry (guitars and church organ), Cameron Saint (double bass) and Louis Spanton (percussion), Rumsey (vocals and guitar) captured this latest collection in another atmospheric church location (All Saints in Yatesbury to be precise). Remarkably the result of just a one-day session last summer, Blank Arcades is an internally wandering yet never unfocused affair that finds multiple routes between sparse simplicity and collaborative camaraderie. After ushering us in with the fleeting a capella “Opening”, the record unfurls imbued with the ambience of its makeshift studio environs and Rumsey’s mesmeric reach. Consequently, the ensuing scene-setting triumvirate of the imposingly twanging “Place Of Dragons”, the gorgeous campfire meshed Byrdsian jangle of “Fall In Eugene” and the pared-back neck-hairs-elevating “Pilot Light” is worth the admission price alone.Thereafter, the mid-portion of proceedings generously brings delicate yet uplifting voice-and-organ beauty (“O Lazarus”); a hushed reimagining of early Simon and Garfunkel (“All Of A Piece”); boxy percussion-driven self-deprecation (“Fastest In The Slow Lane”); respectful nods to various phases within Bert Jansch’s canon (“Juxon Street”, the title track and “Shirley Windmill”); and achingly wistful intimacy (“Darleen”).
There’s no short-changing in the closing passage either, as we’re taken through winsome ensemble-widened storytelling (“We Are The Sons Of Temperance”); flickers of stripped-down solo mode Graham Nash (“Trebarwith Strand”); a delightfully earwormy almost-skiffle group singalong (“Chapeau”); an even starker organ-backed hymnal-vibed interlude (“The Stations Of Your Heart”); and a moment of pensive Pink Moon-like pastoral closure (“Quince Tree”). With such well-measured richness to unpack in its roomy interiors, Blank Arcades is another captivating Andrew Rumsey-curated place to get lost inside.-Adrian-
