The Pearlfishers - Up with the Larks

 “A sun-kissed trip to the most baroque and extravagant sounds of the Sixties” (UNCUT)

They are back back back with Up With The Larks (MA 69), their sixth album for Marina Records. Joyous title track, “Up With The Larks” kickstarts the day, “shattered and blue in splinters and sparks”, rich with trademark Pearlfishers lush vocal harmonies, multi-layered guitar texture, the wild jangle of a battered upright piano and exquisite melodic twists and turns. Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake co-produced four of the album’s cuts, starting with “The Bluebells” – not a tribute to once famous Scottish popsters but a beautiful, string-laden rumination on the turning of seasons. One act that does indeed receive a full-blooded name-check are Womack And Womack in a song titled, aptly enough, “Womack And Womack” which recalls Scott’s early days running with the hawks of the major music industry (“…left the school and joined a band, like other lads across the land, gladly kissed the corporate hand…”). Morning breaks again in “Ring The Bells For A Day”, complete with the glittering Big Star chime of massed Fender Stratocaster, an exultation to “cast the night away” and a line written in tribute to one of Scott’s enduring heroes, Brian Wilson: “Wherever you lie down, wherever you wake up, the world follows”.The Pearlfishers 2006 Japanese tour with BMX Bandits is thrillingly recounted in “The Umbrellas Of Shibuya”, a song which takes its reference point from Michel Legrand’s classic movie opera “The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg” but locates itself in a Tokyo rainstorm – with neon puddles, painted in Morricone banjos, Sakamoto synth blooms, Nilsson mouth music and, most tellingly, Scott’s truly unique sense of melody and structure. Another highlight is the Randy Newman-esque “With You On My Mind” which sounds like a lost Tin Pan Alley classic arranged by Van Dyke Parks. “London’s In Love” could be the theme song to an as-yet-to-be-made romantic comedy blockbuster starring the new Cary Grant, set in the “blue black air” of Britain’s capital, full of promise and heartbreak.The Pearlfishers, firmly rooted in the classic tradition of three minute cinematics as pioneered by Webb, McCartney and, recently Rufus Wainwright, reach a great finale with the album’s closing songs: “Blue Riders On The Range”, a sparkling widescreen epic (sounding like Marvin & Diana doing “RAM”) and the gorgeous, pastoral “I Just See The Rainbow” which ends the album on an optimistic note. “And call me cock-eyed if you will, but I don’t see that dark hill, I just see the rainbow…”.

The only way is UP!Check out http://www.marinarecords.com/ma69.htm for further details and soundfiles. The album gets a worldwide release on September 28, 2007. CD and download.The Umbrellas Of Shibuya (MA 70) is also available as a 7” on white wax. It features the exclusive track “Clumsy” and is way limited – better be quick, folks!More details: http://www.marinarecords.com/ma70.htm.

Produced and arranged by David Scott. Tracks 2, 3, 9 & 10 produced by David Scott and Norman Blake
Track 7 produced by David Scott and Jim Gash

Art Direction & Design by Stefan Kassel / www.stefankassel.com

Words and music by David Scott / Marina SongsRelease date: September 28, 2007 (MA 69)