There is a legend that, in the distant past, a monk once visited Bellshill and declared it the only place on the planet likely to simultaneously induce both epiphany and coma. Rezoning it into the abyss of modern day North Lanarkshire has not, fortunately for anthropologists, compromised any of its special qualities. Talking of those special qualities, or at least their psychic influence, Henry and Fleetwood, featuring Martin John Henry (of Bellshill) and Gillian Fleetwood (not of Bellshill), seem to have been possessed by an urban spiritualism that verges on the worship of despair and their EP, “On The Forest Floor” is therefore a determinedly downbeat affair.
There is of, of course, a time and place for everything and their neatly assembled melancholy moods will suit any period of personal contemplation and particularly a period following the implosion of a relationship. The four songs flow together too so, barring a few seconds of inter song silence, you could justifiably regard them as suite with the apparently casual approach to pacing hiding a definite directional stability. Of the songs, “Timber”, which might even be considered as up-tempo for this band, stands out as the most effective representation of their sound with Ms. Fleetwood’s harp happy to draw divine musical guidance from the celtic deities.
Henry and Fleetwood make songs that float on the river of life always letting the current take them wherever they might go (as long as it is downstream). That, as all true believers know, is the way of modern day folk music.