Luke De-Sciscio - Heaven / September 1, 2023 / by Jon Doyle / original

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“The culmination of everything which has been before.” That’s how we described Luke De-Sciscio‘s if one thing were different, nothing would be the same back in December. The prolific UK songwriter has released mountains of material since we first covered him back in 2016, drawing influences from across the gamut of folk music, somehow managing to put out four full-lengths since we covered if one thing… Our statement therefore feels a little misguided in retrospect. The album did not mark the climax of a career. Such a songwriter will forever be moving on to the next thing.

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But even if no such point exists, there is the sense that Luke De-Sciscio grows more confident and inventive with each passing release, and latest album Heaven might be his most assured to date. As though having built up momentum across the years, De-Sciscio was able to record an album free of overthinking and overworking, instead tapping into an intuitive flow which charges the songs with a sense of poetic authenticity. Take opener ‘Fortress of Cool’ with its nuanced blend of stark and soft tones, the lyrics stripped back to their barest state so that nothing complicates the emotions being delivered.

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The slow, evocative style marks the record, positioning the songs somewhere among those of Jason Molina, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Emma Ruth Rundle. A sound at once tortured and tender, confessional and apologetic. Like ‘Heartbeat’ and its attempts to communicate across a divide between worlds, the spectral shimmer of ‘Death Is Empty’, or expansive closer ‘Heaven Is Doubtlessness’ and its sacrosanct spirit. Luke De-Sciscio recorded the album using his grandfather’s old guitar, and something of this fact comes through in the tracks themselves. A sense of reverence, seriousness, songs as an act of veneration. The mood is perhaps best captured with single ‘Hold The Dark’, another patiently unfurling song which stitches poetic imagery into a picture of a relationship. Taking something intangible and fragile and lending it permanence.

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