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Album Review : Flint Moore – ‘The Aches and the End’

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Review by Paul Monkhouse for MPM

Whisper it very quietly, but in this, their full length debut release, Flint Moore may just have announced not only their arrival fully onto the scene but grabbed the ‘album of the year’ title from other, more veteran acts.

With ten tumultuous tracks, ‘The Aches and the End’ shines in the same way that Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’ and Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’ did when they emerged and Flint Moore has melded elements of both of those landmarks into one whole that absolutely bristles with life and passion. It’s been a long road to get here though, the outfit having first formed some eleven years ago but with previous EPs and an award winning song under their belts, this is their hour and it’s been well worth the wait.

What Flint Moore have mastered is a sense of dynamic that can go from the subtle ghost of a melody to a volcanic outpouring of sound, their deft treatments and playing a thing of strange wonder. From the delicately swirling acoustic notes of opener ‘The Aches’ forward, you’re drawn into a world that juxtaposes the jagged with the pastoral, Francis Pennington’s vocals conveying a warmth that’s as old as time.

Building with an urgency and exploding into a primal force, this punch hits hard and feels like it could tear the world asunder before taking the listener back into the eye of the storm. The ragged vocals bleed life as the guitar of Lawrence Dennis dances with switchblades and the relentless rhythms of Noah Elliot’s drums and the bass of Madeline Holland pulse with an almost blinding intensity on ‘Undermask’, the heat slowly turning up as the album progresses.

An angst ridden ‘Bury My Sins’ and frantic ‘Me Alive’ border on Nirvana at their most feral but filtered through a few shards of English folk music, Pennington’s acoustic guitar and the keys of Ryan Reeve adding subtle colours amongst the broader, heavier splashes. Whilst all this may be dazzling musically, like Buckley’s masterpiece there’s soul very much at the core of everything here and the blending of strength and longing during ‘Incomplete’ is heartbreaking, the vocal nuances the work of someone to whom every word bears tremendous weight.

The album never lets up in quality, the only dips present in the artfully crafted emotional peaks and troughs that are driven ever forward by its dynamic ranges.

Flint Moore move almost supernaturally in their ease as they go from the staggeringly beautiful ‘Be Enough’ and then onto the spacey, dark cathedral of sound that constitutes and inhabits ‘Some Place Else I’ll Rest’.

Unflinching, the quintet tears the ether to pieces with brutal maelstroms of sound during ‘Long Way Same Ground’ and ‘Bloody The Game’ before ‘…and The End’ closes the album in a stunning display of restraint that may be one of the most affecting and shattering things you’ll hear all year.

The Aches and the End’ has all the makings of a classic already and could well be one of the most important albums of the twenty-first century. Seriously, it’s that good. Absolutely jaw dropping, this a sublime work of art.

Website: https://www.flintmoore.com

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3eu9R...

Merchandise: https://www.flintmoore.com/shop

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