NAEVUS
RELATIVLY CLOSE TO THE SEA

For the sixth Naevus album, Relatively Close to the Sea, Lloyd James (voice, acoustic guitar, keyboards) and Joanne Owen (bass, accordion, keyboards) joined by their regular drummer John Murphy (Knifeladder, Shining Vril). The album also features contributions from Greg Ferrari (Womb) on electric guitar, Joanna Quail (SonVer) on cello, Matt Howden (Sieben) on violin; and Arthur Shaw (Cutty Sark) on keyboard. Dominic O’Connor (eulogised in Silent Life’s ‘Dominic Song’) is there in spirit – the album includes a cover version of one of his compositions, previously unreleased in any form. Many of the tracks here have already been performed live in recent Naevus festival appearances, notably ‘Meat On Meat’, which is close in temperament to the preceding album Silent Life. However, the remainder of the tracks on offer branch out in a range of other directions; ‘Dented Mess’ harks back to the existential pop elements of Truffles of Love; ‘The German’ is a dalliance with Schlager-esque murder balladry; while the title track itself combines slide guitar and lo-fi synths with the Naevus band sound. The centrepiece of the album, and Naevus’ greatest recorded work to date, is the 18-minute ‘Go Grow’, takes the progressive influences that have been present in Naevus since the beginning (Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, etc.) and weds them with soaring cello and John Cale-esque piano pounding to produce a sublime epic. Relatively Close to the Sea is packaged in a digipak with 12 page booklet including lyrics.