I’ve followed Anders Parker’s career since The Sunday Times reviewed Varnaline’s Man of Sin a long time ago. It was the cover art that drew me in, as much as the review. 17 or so albums later and Anders Parker’s music continues to develop, unfold and inspire. The Man Who Fell From Earth is (if you ask me, which of course, you don’t) the artist’s best work since 2009’s epic Skyscraper/Crow double CD set.
Parker wrote the songs that comprise The Man Who Fell From Earth during the winter of 2016 in the mountains of Upstate New York, then recorded the songs in those same mountains. The album is Parker singing and playing acoustic guitar accompanied by a string trio and a pedal steel. One of the record’s themes is interstellar transmutation. You can sense an element of elevation here. It’s folk music, Jim, but not as we know it. And it may be my album of 2017. And if it isn’t, it’ll still be in the top 3 of the year’s releases for me.
„Yeah, I went to where you were
Gravity it held on tight
Standing up against the stairs
All of you looked so right
All of you looked so right
No regrets, no turning round, no looking back
It’s who you are, it’s who I am, it’s who we were, it’s who we are“
„Found you on the sand dunes, found you in the streets“
The record’s title is an obvious nod to Nicolas Roeg, but for me the Earth/space interplay here is more reminiscent of the opening sequences of Tarkovski’s „Solyaris“. Tarkovski really lays the visual language on thick, in a good way: the wooden cabin whose window looks out upon towering forests and the nowhere, endless blue above, the caged bird, the grounded spaceman, all that jazz.
