It was always going to be interesting to see how Iain Archer approached the follow up to 2004’s excellent Flood The Tanks. That album saw Archer attempting to find his identity as a songwriter as he was consciously trying to avoid joining the swelling ranks of the plaintive and mournful MOR singer-songwriter brigade. In that regard he was successful but, by his own account, he didn’t want Magnetic North to undergo the same lengthy and agonised gestation as its predecessor.
Citing The Shins and Bright Eyes as influences, he has said that this new record was deliberately made with a certain lack of control. This newfound freedom has resulted in Archer’s best work to date. The album opener ‘Canal Song (End Of Sentence)’ displays his ability to sing in a voice that is both raw and warmly inviting at the same time. The song has a simple, almost perverse catchiness as he sings about the pounding his heart has taken and his wonder as it ‘just beats on despite the ache’.
‘Minus Ten’ sees him upping the pace a little and to great effect but it’s on the next track, ‘When It Kicks In’, that Archer reaches new heights. The song draws on his experience of growing up in a troubled Northern Ireland where the ‘streets are on fire, the army’s on the main street firing a plastic round’. The song’s jarring guitars, relentless pace and uplifting chorus melody mark it out as one of the album’s highlights. One of Archer’s greatest strengths is his ability to steer well clear of cliché and as a result songs like ‘Soleil’ and ‘Frozen Northern Shores’ have a vitality about them that is truly refreshing to hear while ‘Arriero’ is the perfect example that it’s still possible to write a piano led song that doesn’t descend into FM mawkishness.