Richard Allen, with his new album, “Locust Tree Lane”, may have given us the first great album of this 2021 that we have just started for lovers of hypnotizing and acoustic sounds, and for those who dream their eyes open when they play. Nick Drake, with whom Allen has some similarities in his music.
Like the art that with two chiaroscuro chords that accompany an angelic voice, it causes that feeling of weightlessness. An emotion is only reinforced by the second song that is even more beautiful, “The World On Your Chest”, where now some choirs and different wind instruments are joined.
Little is known of Richard Allen, some aura of mystery hangs over him. We know that he lived in the English countryside in the late 1980s, but his childhood was in the French city of Amiens; who put out an album and a couple of EPs that practically didn’t sell. And now, his musical union with the French multi-instrumentalist Kenny Ruby, a guy who has frequently worked with Iggy Poop since he settled permanently in France, has given fruit to this work that will delight lovers of the aforementioned Drake, but also by Bert Jansch, John Martyn and all those British artists who knew how to combine folk with the most bewitching magic so majestically.
An album with beautiful harmonies, hypnotizing and relaxing. Beauty for a world steeped in ugliness and stupidity.
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