Given how prolific Malcom Lacey is, we probably should have anticipated some new music from Arrange this year. We didn’t and so it was a huge pleasure to discover the sublime “Home” nestling in our Soundcloud stream a few days ago.
For those of you unfamiliar with Arrange, it is the project of 21 year old Lacey and one of such wonderous, wisp like ambient melodies and anguished, broken vocals that his last album, New Memory was our album of the year for 2012. Dealing with an abusive childhood, overcoming the past and looking forward, it was probably the most emotionally charged and moving pieces of music we’d heard in years.
Taken from his forthcoming album, Their Bodies in a Fog, “Home” is quintessentially Arrange yet also an evolution. It is still as fragile as a whispered promise and as hushed as a winter’s morning, but there’s more, so much more.
Like opening a music box it begins with a delicate innocence before it folds out into Lacey’s muted vocal that spins and twirls with guitars like a clockwork ballerina. Far away chatter like fragile memories twist like shadows and shapes in the corner of your eye, darkening and scarring as emotion soars with the tempo and energy. There are layers within, even more than before, the depths tunnel further down into darkness while the highs soar ever closer to the sun. It is the ending though, the glorious horn laden ending, that will enrapture and stir your soul. It’s like throwing off shackles that have held you down for so long, flinging the door wide as the beat intensifies and the melody builds and instantly having to cover your eyes from the brightness and optimism that awaits.
It’s a devastating five minutes of aural majesty and one that, unsurprisingly, has us very excited for the new Arrange album next month.
”Home” is taken from the forthcoming Arrange LP, ‘Their Bodies in a Fog’, which is out via Orchid Tapes on 4 March and available to pre-order here.
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