FIRST LIGHT

Farpoint could be described as Mostly Autumn's cousins from the American south. Like MA they play a melodic mixture of Celtic folk and prog, and distribute vocal duties among a male and female vocalist. Yet they really don't sound that similar. Farpoint seems to have a wider variety of musical influences and lyrically tend to the Christian as opposed to the more earthy spiritual, which perhaps contributes to a someone naive quality in this debut. While the jagged edges do smooth out in later releases, this innocence remains a characteristic of the Farpoint sound.

One of the highlights is "Words of Pain", in which the flute playing of Dana Oxendine shines over the acoustic guitar, before she releases the flute and treats us to an engagingly melancholy vocal performance. Like many bands that feature masculine and feminine vox, I do love it when they sing together or share duties in the same song, an event which doesn't happen nearly often enough. As a result, I really lap up tunes like "Long Slow Journey", which seems to nod a bit compositionally to "All Along the Watchtower". Clarke Boone's raspy friendly voice contrasts pleasantly with Oxendine's more ethereal delivery. The heavy folk instrumental "Tartans" conjures the British Isles traditions of South Carolina. To conjure up a reference more obscure than the artist, it reminds me of some of guitarist Paul Brett's late 1970s instrumentals. "Ex-Animo" is quite the opposite, a delicate ode on acoustic guitar and piano.

Not everything here is up to the same quality. Later albums would be a bit more consistent but this is still a surprisingly strong debut.