Love Record Stores Edition. Released 18th December, via Basin Rock
Heavyweight linen grained sleeve, with printed inner sleeve. Digital download included. Non-Returnable.
The debut album of new Irish songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances is shot through with a sense of mystery - an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates songs with smokey luminescence. With Land of No Junction, Frances has built a universe full of intimacy and depth, with lyrics written through a process of free thought writing. It lends the record fluidity, each song in dialogue with the next not only through language, but the way each musical choice complements or threads into another. “I would write without putting pressure on taking the song in any particular direction. It all carried itself naturally and instinctively with melody coming first and then structure later.” ”
Written over several years, the songs traverse and inhabit this indeterminate landscape: the beginnings of love, moments of loss, discovery, fragility and strength, all intermingle and interact. On the eponymously titled final song Frances sings “Take me to the land of no junction/Before it fades away/Where the roads can never cross/But go their own way.” It is this search that lies at the heart of the album, recalling journeys towards an ever shifting centre - a centre that cannot hold - where maps are constantly being rewritten.
Uncut Album Of The Month ''As a kind of millennial Astral Weeks, Land Of No Junction feels like a complete statement. Call it a quiet protest against reality ; a one-woman bed-in . One way and another , it works like a dream.”
Boxed 4/5 Lead Review in MOJO: 'Sharing ambient material with Cate Le Bon and Broadcast, these are songs that chime delicately with an uncertain world"
"The Irish songwriter’s voice shines like a headlight in fog. Her debut abounds with deceptively serene serenades and surprising lyrical shifts." Pitchfork
'An alluringly languid debut to help the winter months to glide by' 4/5 The Times
"These songs are careful things, composed and played with an elegant precision, and infused with a deep, netherworldly quality" **** Metro
"a debut full of ideas.... explored with an unrestricted freedom" Loud & Quiet
"One of 2020’s best albums, and it’s still only January." The Arts Desk
Available on limited edition LRS white vinyl