Album Review: Co-Pilgrim - A Fairer Sea

Co-Pilgrim stands as the aural alter-ego of Mike Gale, who formed Black Neilson, moved to Melbourne from the Mother Country and had a few hits. However, for A Fairer Sea, Co-Pilgrim's second long-player, having returned to England Gale has immersed himself in a pastoral amalgam of lush, maudlin instrumentation and Beach Boys harmonies, overseen by Ride's own Mark Gardener. Yet even though Gale has a way with words and knows his way around a melody, A Fairer Sea remains a fairly frustrating listen.

The lyricism is poignant and at times stirring. Opener 22, the title track and Roslindale are wrapped up in the tangled and melancholy tale of a long-distance relationship that never quite gets the chance to bloom. There's a sense of being lost all the way through the album – the loss of identity (No Guiding Light), the loss of belonging (Trapeza), the loss of place (I'm Going To The Country).

It's lush and often beautiful, but A Fairer Sea suffers mainly by a crisis in faith. The hybridisation of folk and country into a bucolic pop pastiche undulates throughout A Fairer Sea without enough respite, too often threatening to drift into the background. Thus the best tracks are the low, melancholic numbers that wallow in a fog of doubt and despair (especially No Man Or Mountain (Dyana Gray)), yet are broken up with sunnier numbers that don't feel as earnest or real, thus dulling the gravity of what's come before. Next time there might be a true middle ground for Co-Pilgrim to rise from, but for now A Fairer Sea, like much of its narrative, remains lost in the wilderness.