ArbouretumSong Of The PearlReview

In this attention deficit disorder age, bands often arrive armed with one brash, hyped debut album (think Strokes, Scissor Sisters or Killers), before losing their nerve along with whatever made them distinctive in the first place. Which makes psychedelic rockers Arbouretum a welcome exception: they began their career tentatively, their very line-up in flux, but have gradually gained in confidence and stature, culminating in this assured, grandiose third album.

Led by singer/ guitarist Dave Heumann, the Baltimore quartet are both traditionalist and inventive, drawing heavily on the textures and melodies of English folk but expanding them to fit the far vaster plains and skies of their home country. The opening False Spring is a perfect example, riding in on a guitar riff as weighty and elemental as shifting tectonic plates, over which Heumann lays down an incantatory, haunting melody.

It's one of several songs that resemble Bob Mould's work on the two remarkable Sugar albums, similarly fusing rugged Americana, sweeping scale and pretty, plaintive melodies. The intricate, virtuoso Thin Dominion particularly impressive, its multiple guitars simultaneously surging forward and dragging back, in a contrapuntal tug of war. Of the harder numbers, only Infinite Corridors mis-fires, squandering its fierce Led Zeppelin riff with detours into ornate, twiddly guitar solo excess.

The band are just as interesting showcasing their softer, more flower powered side. A closing cover of Bob Dylan's Tomorrow Is A Long Time is gorgeous and stately, Heumann's fragile voice sparsely backed by a scraping, sullen guitar, while the haunting melody and gently lilting guitars of Down By The Fall Line distantly echo Scarborough Fair. The title track's luxuriant strings and chiming guitars are similarly seductive.

The main flaw of Song Of The Pearl is that too many of the songs resemble each other, particularly in the melodies and granity guitar sound. A little more variety in the sonic landscape would have made the album's peaks stand even taller. But it's a rich, distinctive and sure-footed album, and one which hints there may be better yet to come.