Dark Light – Philip Parfitt (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Has it really been four years since Mental Home Recordings? Apparently, it has, so a new, full dose sonic snifter from Philip Parfitt in the form of eleven new songs is just what the music doctor ordered. Why? Because Philip does things his way and makes music according to his own rules and, in this day and age where everything seems to be about conforming to strict templates, thinly repackaging the past and following record company orders to conform and comply, that is something that the musical landscape thirsts for.

I get some of the same feelings listening to Philip Parfitt as I do when listening to the likes of Leonard Cohen: that same sense of mysticism and adventure, the same sense of poeticism and deeper meanings, the same darkness, not that theatrical darkness that goth bands used to embrace to look menacing or otherworldly, but the sort of darkness that is found in the corners of all our lives if only we look deep enough.

Songs such as Black Widow, with its brilliant blend of spoken word and sultry brass, the pathos-infused Broken, and the acoustic alt-rock ballad Too Little Too Late all drip with such dark reflections, but these qualities are the hallmark of the whole album to some degree.

Philip Parfitt’s skill, which he demonstrates effortlessly on Dark Light, is his ability to take something as well-trodden as rock music and find new places for it to go. He warps it into strange, stretched versions of itself, he laces through soulful brass lines which become inexplicably sinister or seductive just through any association with the music, and he writes lyrical narratives that feel like the unseen story lines that thread their way through the back of a Carson McCullers or Flannery O’Connor story.

Modern music is too predictable, too unadventurous, and too eager to live up to audiences’ expectations. So thank God for musicians like Philip Parfitt.