Searcher Dreamer is a serene dive into the music of Blake’s Fortune. A calming indie-folk tone runs right through the songwriter’s sophomore offering, creating a dreamlike milieu from start to finish that invites repeated listens.
The warm, hazy shimmer of Searcher Dreamer is established from the glistening guitars, distant vocal harmonies and slow-burn tempo of record opener ‘Searcher’. From its reverb-soaked atmosphere to the ethereal textural undercurrent, the overarching sound of the album itself forms a deep foundation for Blake’s Fortune to weave around.
Creating a dynamic sense of aspect to Searcher Dreamer, ‘Redwood Heart’ pushes the pace of the album with an alt-country twang that works its way into the core dream-folk production, giving it record as a whole a feeling of contrast. This means the more rich harmonics of songs like ‘Stow Away’, the organic distance of ‘Trail’, and the glimmering shuffle of ‘Dreamer’ have a scale to them within the deeper depths of the album’s production.
However, it’s the long-form atmospherics of ‘The Road We Drove Divides’ that provides the stand out moment of Searcher Dreamer. Here Blake’s Fortune makes excellent use of the depth of field formed from the beginning of the album by weaving the haunting backing vocals, lush guitar work and scattered beats and blending them into his songwriter with aplomb.
And so it goes, Searcher Dreamer is an inviting album to listen to. An intimate self-portrait presented through a prism of handmade indie-folk and washing atmospheres, Blake’s Fortune’s sophomore album is an engaging one where the foreground and the background merge together as one.
Rating: 8/10
Searcher Dreamer by Blake’s Fortune is out now.