Scarlet‘s Well - Gatekeeper (2008)

In the beginning, Scarlet’s Well was Bid (of Monochrome Set fame) accompanied by a fluctuating cast of girlish singers, esoteric musicians and random collaborators. It was a beautiful but primarily solo vision. Lavishly illustrated albums emerged quietly, all set in the vicinity of a place called Mousseron, “a sickly village situated somewhere east of the Azores and only slightly north of the Styx” populated by howling wolves, seductive mermaids and a bawdy captain with his crew of beer-swilling pirates and off-kilter animals with disturbingly human characteristics.

Seven albums have now been released and with the most recent two: Black Tulip Wings (2006) and Gatekeeper (2008), Scarlet’s Well has evolved into a band in its own right, with live gigs, collaborative song writing, luscious merchandise, tantrums and uncorroborated suggestions of bizarre fantasies. A sense of band empathy and the benefits of varied influences are evident in both these albums but there is still a thematic consistency.

Although there is a conceptual thread that runs through the albums, the songs still function as pop in the sweetest sense, i.e. they are catchy, you can sing along (if you must) and most are dance friendly. What makes them special is their unpredictability and the dizzying range of musical genres combined with an essence that is simply ‘Scarlet’s Well’. It’s Whirling Dervish meets gypsy troubadour with the crack of a whip on the rump of a unicorn…then it gets fey and funky.

Lyrics leap from cryptic literary allusions to pert whimsy and although there is a certain obscure quality there is also an air of familiarity: a morphic memory thing bringing on a parallel universe that reveals itself to those who are open to getting lost with new acquaintances down strange cobbled streets, wooded glades, uncharted waters or the dark tunnels of the underworld.