Whilst former bandmate Geordie Greep surged straight into an obvious solo career, just months after the breakup of Black Midi, Cameron Picton took some time out of the game to take stock. He’d spent the first years of his adult life touring the world, and the result was some kind of cocktail of disenfranchisement and exhaustion. With no urge to jump into another musical project – solo or otherwise – with its myriad of tours and album cycles, he opted to take some time to work out what the perfect, fulfilling musical project would really look like.
Obsessive Black Midi fans will recognise the wide-eyed, exploratory nature of My New Band Believe – Picton’s transient solo vehicle – but that is where the similarities with his old group end.
For one thing, this self-titled debut album is entirely acoustic, with a cast of a few dozen collaborators adding a whole arsenal of improvised strings and percussion to Picton’s knotty folk baroque guitar compositions. Meanwhile, the misty-eyed devotional lyrical matter is a far cry from all of the decay and cannibals of his lyrical contribution to Black Midi – subtlety is the order of the day.
But it is this clean break with his past life that allows Picton to thrive and spread his wings. My New Band Believe sees the songwriter reborn, liberated, and trying to cram as many ideas as is physically possible into a three-minute pop song.
‘Love Story’ begins life as a piano-led ballad, before Picton finds his lonely vocals pursued by a misfiring chamber orchestra and the lollopping upright bass of Caius Williams. Melodic verses fade in and out of focus, as swelling arrangements match the emotion of Picton’s lyrics blow-for-blow. Meanwhile, ‘Pearls’ sees a solemn folk exoskeleton overwhelmed by a discordant jazz ensemble, like an Arthur Verocai song overcome by seasickness or vertigo. “That’s all they’re asking for, one million years,” rasps Picton, as the members of Caroline’s cacophony of strings and brass exude something akin to the THX Deep Note over the top.
‘Actress’ and ‘Heart of Darkness’ both clock in around eight minutes, and are the album’s crowning highlights – a swelling centrepiece on each side. ‘Actress’ is a slow-building sprawl, ornamental chamber-folk arrangements unfurl to reveal a repeating chorus that gets ever more manic, whilst ‘Heart of Darkness’ begins its heroes journey with a whirlwind of scratchy Bert Jansch acoustic guitar experiments and ends with a long passage of improvised percussion experiments – gristly and compelling the whole way through.
Perhaps, if you had only one eye on Cameron Picton’s role in Black Midi, you might not think that he had it in him. Here we have a debut that is classy and imaginative, but also every bit as weird as the avant-prog zolo headfuck of his previous band. On the surface, My New Band Believe is a fully-acoustic singer-songwriter record, but whole strange worlds exist in every groove.
