Roy Montgomery & Friends

Broken Heart Surgery

LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Underground icon Roy Montgomery gathers friends and cohorts on his Discreet Music debut, contemplating loss by enveloping himself in melancholic luminance, letting the pastel ghosts of dreampop and folk shepherd a set of gorgeous, pointed laments that will quite obviously give you goosebumps if yr into classic Cocteau Twins. Stunning, heart-stopping work

Despite being lauded as the “greatest living guitarist”, cited by Grouper as a huge influence, and issuing what feels like an endless succession of exceptional albums over the last however many years, it feels like it’s only really now that Roy Montgomery is about to get his dues from a wider audience. His time has come.

'Broken Heart Surgery' was penned after the tragic loss of Montgomery's long-term partner, with a crew of his friends helping him realise the vision: Emma Johnston (who collaborated with Montgomery on 2019's 'After Nietzche' and 2021's 'Rhymes of Chance'), Dark Matter's Stephen Cogle and Nicole Moffat, Martha Skye Murphy (who featured on last year's 'At Dawn'), Arnie Van Bussel and Alicia Merz (aka Birds of Passage). Together, the band assemble a billowing set of impossibly beautiful reveries; Montgomery's unmistakable, gossamer strums take the lead, lifted to the welkin by his collaborators' choir of voices. "Sky is a long word, the infinite hue and constant spark of empty space, just me and you, everything is new," enunciates Johnston on 'Sky', forming a stark introduction to Montgomery's idiosyncratic shimmer and a swarm of wordless, ethereal cries from Cogle and Moffat.

As the album's title suggests, it's sorrowful material, but remains fixated on treatment rather than endless rumination. The title track begins with desolate, Slowdive-esque coruscations that cushion Moffat's gothic vocals and, in time, her bandmate Cogle's. The two pass words back and forth, substantiating the resonance of heartbreak over a barely audible drum machine and layers of echoing guitar. 'Faded From You' is blurred further, a shattered mass of crystalline harmonies draped in Merz's overcast, Grouper-like coos, and on 'Heart Restart, Montgomery freezes all his tones in icy, organ-like phrases, swirling Murphy's angelic cry into a divine hymn. The krautrock grind of his recent gear has dissolved almost completely on this one, leaving hazy, Polaroid memories and tentative futures that Montgomery infuses with yearning. Enlisting his close friends only emphasises the album’s devotional qualities - and the profound richness of shared experience.

Cogle, Johnston, Moffat, Murphy, Bussel and Montgomery braid their voices into an ecstatic chorus on 'Never The Same Again', the album's most blissful, enigmatic cut. Here, Montgomery's strums take a back seat as the voices form into dense clouds, shimmering and sparkling with cinematic grandeur. Few artists are able to capture such a rich and complex spectrum of sensation and intensity. Montgomery could easily have retreated into the shadows, but instead steps headlong into grief and examines its impact, artfully fraying its expected edges. Once again, we're a bit ruined.

LP (Black Vinyl) (6)