HARBOUR SONGS 28th April 2026
This is a gorgeously put together album, as it probably should be from an act with two decades behind them. If it was a film, I’d be talking about the remarkable lighting and framing; as it’s an album, I’ll have to mention the way the piano, fiddle and ever-present lap steel add sonic colour to everything. The lyrics are held within the acoustic frame of these warm sounds and highlights applied.
Lyrics are warm and expressive, bringing sketches that create feeling. The scene-setter and possibly best song, ‘One More Dance Around the Sun’, hymns the routines of life, the patterns of landscapes, the rhythm of the seasons and we dance around the sun once more. Equally, Dekker seeks comfort in familiarity with ‘Wrong, Wrong, Wrong’, where he welcomes a friend he can always trust. In ‘Running Out Of Time’ he calls for us to focus on home, community, love. There’s a big ‘true love’ song as he waits ‘For You To Come Around’. Elsewhere the songs touch on the strangeness of ending up where you are, sometimes by the winds of life blowing one way not another, to the picture of a jay fledging, only to be seized by a hawk. The efforts of the mother are never wasted despite the hazards of life, opines Dekker. In the next song he’s thinking about his own kids, the future, and his love for an old friend.
Apparently John Martyn’s ‘Bless The Weather’ was a touchpoint here. The echoplex wasn’t invited but the intimate feel is present, intimate yet, because of the accurate examination of the personal, universal. The band have a history of using resonant old spaces, with albums produced by lead man, Tony Dekker. Although he’s handed over production reins, this album has a warm and comforting feel too. With an ever-shifting line-up behind Tony Dekker, producer, Darcy Yates, chose the recording band for the album and they nailed it in five days flat. Aside from the pedal steel, there is fiddle, mandolin, piano, Hammond B3, resonant upright bass, expressive electric guitar and more, adding to a palette of colours for the sound.
There’s a loveliness to the sound and a warm encouragement to the words, making for a comforting blanket of an album, a set for the cool evening of a warm day.
The set came out in October 2025 across the Atlantic but the UK release means you can get physical copies easier.