Still Waters, Empty House arrived suddenly. There were no lead singles in the run-up to its release, simply an announcement from the band that it was coming. It’s a remarkably understated rollout for a band whose music remains anything such. A true darling of the Bristol underground, Foot Foot often sounds like the logical conclusion of Pixies‘ loud and quiet dynamic, a gorgeous mix of drums, bass, guitar, sax, and violins that alternates seamlessly between folk melancholy and math rock annihilation. In a lesser group’s hands, it could be a gimmick to have tracks that mix dream pop vocals and mournful strings with avant-garde explosions but with Foot Foot, their music remains remarkably clear in its chaotic and beautiful vision.
At its core, Foot Foot’s sound seems to orbit the ethereal vocals of lead singer Esther Pollock, whose melancholic twee recalls Swirlies‘ Seana Carmody filtered through the lens of a forgotten fairy tale. She remains perhaps the one constant variable in the band’s shifting soundscapes, grounding the swirling rock orchestration with a distinctly human touch. The excellent production helps keep her voice at the forefront of the songs, it weaves brilliantly through the strings of Sam Greenwood’s violin and the thrashing of Illyr Cox’s drums like a spirit slipping out from under the floorboards. At times she plays maestro to the rest of the band on a track like the excellent ‘Army Wives’ where the tension seems to rise and fall alongside her croon or on ‘River Phoenix/Macaulay Culkin’ where her opening whistle summons out a tangled Slint-like guitar riff. Esther’s lyrics carry a Midwest emo quality to them, they’re often short and understated yet delivered in a way that glints at an unspoken pain. However, her voice skirts away from their hysterics. Instead, she delivers lines like “I’m knitting scarves you’ll never wear” and “Oh to feel to just like a child/Being held that way” in a tuneful yet reserved tone. The emotions are always bubbling under the surface but her vocals rarely let them out.
Instead, the instruments seem to speak for her, as it’s when her voice fades away that Foot Foot demonstrates a passion for brutality. On opener ‘Haberdashery’ a creeping ghostly build-up is intermixed with Evo Ethel’s squalling sax work and thrashing guitar lines to create a sudden squeeze of anxiety. In those moments Foot Foot begins to resemble the freeform jazz-rock of Henry Cow and other rock in opposition acts. However, unlike fellow Fred Frith disciples Black Midi, these moments of sonic extremity are counterpoints rather than focal points. On songs like ‘Crawl Ball’ the sudden thrush of drums and guitar sax skronk appear as a release more than a crush, as Esther’s melancholic musings have been cast out into the air to roam freely and savagely. Yet just as often the instruments capture an unnerving beauty. On ‘Soft Mint’ Sam Greenwood’s violin ebbs and flows through the space like waves in a storm, rising and flowing as it guides the rest of the band toward an ever-nearing climax. The instruments offer the catharsis that Esther’s voice doesn’t. It resembles the noise-pop acts of the nineties who’d let their emotions out through bursts of guitar feedback. Foot Foot often achieves a similar effect with their miniature orchestra.
Still, comparisons fail to capture why Foot Foot is an endlessly intriguing act. Their sonic cocktail of Vashti Bunyan-style chamber folk and math rock intensity bears some similarities to the likes of BCNR and Ugly, but then an element will come into play that renders those points moot. Mid-album epic ‘River Phoenix/Macaulay Culkin’ stands out as Foot Foot at their most intense, effortlessly flipping from a post-hardcore screech to an ever-building post-rock twitch. While slowcore style closer ‘Slow Song’ might be the band’s most entrancing piece yet with Esther’s painful repletion of “The pills I take won’t let me cry” gradually builds to a rapturous baroque climax. It’s at these moments where Foot Foot feels unlike anything else occurring in music right now.
Yes, they carry the orchestral edge that marks out many emerging bands but those groups’ heavy emphasis on grand moments and theatrical arrangements feels distinctly different from them. Rather, Foot Foot is a band who march to their own folk-prog beat, gracefully combining the high-flying complexities of RIO and post-rock with a beautifully tender core. There’s a heart beating within this album as earnest as the sparsest of folk records; what makes it so beautiful is how the instrumentation complements it rather than smother. All the unspoken words and never-sent messages emerge through Foot Foot’s symphony of saxophone skronks and violin screeches, before subsiding into gorgeous waves of chamber folk melancholy.
Foot Foot’s self released Still Waters, Empty House is out now.
