For the past ten years schoolteacher Duncan Sumpner has been creating pastoral folk in the rural isolation of his Peak District home. Although praised to high heaven by label mates, Vetiver and Múm for his self-titled 2005 debut 'Songs of Green Pheasant', the album seemed disappointingly flat for the most part. Granted, a lone folk-leaning man with a 4-track wasn't going to produce the venturous works of a latter day Brian Wilson, but aside from skilfully evoking the 60's ghosts of Simon & Garfunkel and Nick Drake, it just seemed a little too lo-fi.
Thankfully, the exact polar of this is what's immediately noticeable about 'Aerial Days'. The album's seven songs - now recorded on 8-track - reveal a richer, deeper production and drive Sumpner's sonic musings a country mile beyond idiosyncratic outsider folk. The windy atmospherics and foggy vocals now take on a sharper tone, resembling the warm hum of Sufjan Stevens rather than the minimalist workings of Richard Youngs.
The album is, however, as introspective as ever, but it's crafted more skilfully this time around. Opener 'Pink By White' is a dreamy neo-psychedelic workout that sounds like what Kings of Convenience should, and would, if they got over their Badly Drawn Boy obsession. The percussion driven 'Wolves Amongst Snowmen' sees Sumpner doing what he does best lyrically ie. sticking words to feelings, and an inspired rendering of The Beatles' 'Dear Prudence' is perhaps most effective in the fact that it doesn't turn into fanworship or parody. 'Remembering and Forgetting''s gloomy recount of a newspaper article about teenage killers however, doesn't fair so well, nor does the misguided critique on religion in childhood that is 'Wintered'. But, album closer, 'Brody Jacket', while looking the weakest on paper (it laments about chucking away a seven year old coat) is a spot of genius, and brings the album to a hushed, but climatic close.
Never venturing out of a cautious range, Sumpner's exploration of a kaleidoscope of emotions from a small palette of sounds is nailed here. And, on this second attempt at turning everyday humdrum into romantic lyricism, the Green Pheasant has successfully spun a yarn worth exploring.
