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Part of me wishes Bell Hollow's new record Foxgloves hadn't come to me in the form of emailed files. I wish I had some gloomily romantic tale, one best told after midnight, to accompany how I first came to this fine new record. The emotional scope of the album is wonderfully, cinematically sombre and left me feeling I was being pulled into its own private world - inside which I stayed wonderfully lost for the entire forty-two minutes of Foxgloves.

After snapping out of the album's trance, I was struck by the nostalgia the record evokes. I'm hesitant to describe Bell Hollow's sound as this meets that, both because listeners can easily discern that for themselves and I feel comparisons are unfair for the sound on display in Foxgloves. While the record does wear its influences on its sleeve, the sound is never carbon-copy. The influences sound studied and respected, then updated and reinterpreted for an entirely new record. While some tracks play more like homage than others, there's no denying fantastically original tracks like "Jamais Vu" and "Copper Crayon", just to name a few.

One of the album's best characteristics is its sense of restraint, not to the point of draining the tracks of life, depth and emotion; but to a concise, mature sound and focused song construction. Anchored by the precision drumming and guiding bass of Todd Karasik and Chistopher Bollman, respectively, the songs build a swirling, layered sound upon the excellent, shimmering guitar work of Greg Fasolino. The nuanced guitar alternates between flirting around the rhythm section and moving into center stage, creating the album's excellent dynamic and providing the perfect backdrop for the ethereal voice of front-man Nick Niles. I'm pleased to find the voice guiding these tracks through their darkly emotional terrain to be one of the most genuinely beautiful, nuanced voices I've heard recently. There are synth elements present, but again done with a welcome sense of taste and restraint - it's almost hard to imagine an album this concise ever existed outside it's finished, polished form.

Stepping back from my personal taste for a moment, do I think that Foxgloves is going to win over listeners either uninitiated or interested in this sound/style/scene? Probably not. While the album is a fine construction, it does exist firmly in the realm of macabre shoegaze a bit to strongly to branch out and grab those not eager to listen . . . though they should. Anyone taking the time to lose themselves in this beautiful record will find themselves enjoying it on the first listen, thinking about it after the second and adding it to their list of classics soon thereafter.

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Reviewer: Will Joines Added: December 9th 2007