Single of the Week: Fossil Collective – ‘I Remember It Now’

January is normally a relatively quiet month for pretty much almost everything. That is, except for the initial bursts of sales madness and Oscar buzz. Fevered consumerism and industry circle jerking aside though, January’s a quiet one. It’s all burned out after the binge and purge of the festive period and all tuckered out from transitioning between old and new year. Which can mean its slim pickings for quality releases.

However, as if by way of representing the quiet and eerie calm of this cold winter month we’re being bored through by, Leeds two-piece Fossil Collective breeze in on the crisp January air with their gently melancholic and quite serene contemporary folk, rich with layered but spare instrumentation, a delicate and dreamy atmosphere, as well as tender harmonies. Think Fleet Foxes, Midlake, and Bon Iver.

The duo have recently released their latest EP, Flux, and have been dropping some tracks from it of late, as you do. Which leads me to the most recent to fall from it like peaceful snow, ‘I Remember It Now’, and our single of the week. The EP itself is the first new music the pair of multi-instrumentalists, David Fendick and Jonny Hooker, have released in two years but it arrives with the compositional confidence of a band who have been keeping up with themselves and churning songs out regularly.

‘I Remember It Now’ is exemplary of this in its display of complete comfort in rushing nothing and not feeling the need for unnecessary frills or to be showy. The track slowly and sombrely builds from its quiet beginnings, quietly filling out into a lush but still quite sparse folk arrangement with a wistful, wintery and reminiscing by a log fire quality to its harmonies, suited perfectly to its hazy lyrical recollections.