The Seventeenth Century – Notes EP

Growing up in Glasgow can’t be easy for anyone, especially those harbouring ambitions to be a violin player in a contemporary folk-rock band…carrying your instrument of choice into school would be akin to wearing a mini-skirt to prison on your first day. Nonetheless, whatever obstacles and ritual playground beatings that he may have had to overcome, Mark Farmer has achieved his dream and now fronts his own band The Seventeenth Century, fiddle firmly in hand as he defiantly croons and bellows his gorgeous, if a little rustic, melodies over the baroque and roll provided the boys who didn’t used to tease him in class.

To aurally picture The Seventeenth Century’s sound, think Fleet Foxes at their most bucolic, or the Beach Boys, should they have swapped the surfboards and sunshine of California for the bracken and fog of the Scottish Moors. Their instruments entwine with each other as the bands’ voices build complex harmonies over poetic narratives, with well-placed pauses and inventive drum fills to grab and hold their audience’s attention. Lyrically, the band lean heavily on the sort of raw beauty and vivid imagery associated with fellow Scottish poet Burns, with lines like, “We rummaged through the roses in the park”, eliciting Proustian rushes of lost childhood days; one can bet that Rabbie would not have been adverse in sharing a wee dram or two with these up and coming bards.

‘Roses in the Park’ is the EP’s centre piece, a song that reaches out beyond your bedroom speakers and pulls you into the world that only truly poetic music can create, the Farmer’s hypnotic crooning enveloping and engulfing every single one of your senses until you are completely at the mercy of the climactic final chorus.

This is a mini-album of great strength, showing off huge potential in a band that are sure to be signed to a savvy record label at some point this year; over the course of a full-length the formula may begin to wear thin over an entire album and you may begin to feel as if you are stuck in a Glaswegian bar with an old navvy who will just not stop singing tales of his sea-faring days, with everyone just a little too polite, (or scared), to ask him to leave. However, the talent is clearly there, and with the right direction and the passion that burns so brightly in each of these young musicians, The Seventeenth Century are sure to make their name stand out in 2010.

To listen to The Seventeenth Century, click here.

For the published article, click here.

David Harfield