Fergus McKay and Gaia Miato's brainchild has always been nomadic in spirit, but their fourth outing finds them most confidently inhabiting their role as musical cartographers. The opening salvo of 'The Boats'—already making waves as the album's lead single—establishes the band's curious gift for making the political deeply personal. It's a meditation on migration that avoids both sentimentality and didacticism, instead finding its power in the spaces between acoustic guitar arpeggios and what sounds like half the world's percussion section having an animated conversation.
The album's title proves prophetic. This is music that revels in its own beautiful imperfections, where a bluesy country lament might suddenly veer into what can only be described as Pyrenean polka territory, with McKay's weathered vocals providing the thread that somehow holds it all together. The influence of producer Keith Witty is felt not in any attempt to smooth the rough edges, but in his evident trust in the band's instincts. The production has the warmth of that eco-friendly studio they built themselves—you can practically smell the wood shavings and mountain air.
What could easily become a United Nations of musical tourism instead feels genuinely lived-in. When the afrobeat rhythms surface on tracks like 'Borrowed Ground,' they don't feel appropriated but integrated, as natural as McKay's Scots burr or Miato's melodic sensibilities. The tango elements—most pronounced on the haunting 'Letters from Foix'—arrive not as exotic seasoning but as another dialect in the band's increasingly fluent polyglot tongue.
The album's genius lies in its understanding that folk music has always been a magpie art form, stealing from whatever traditions happen to be passing through. Nothing Concrete have simply expanded their definition of what constitutes the folk tradition, treating a jazz standard and a West African rhythm pattern with equal reverence and curiosity.
As Nothing Concrete prepare to carry these songs to Glastonbury's vast stages, one suspects they may find their natural habitat not in the festival's main arena but in some impossibly intimate late-night tent where stories can still be told and genuinely heard. 'The Imperfectionist' is, paradoxically, a perfect argument for embracing our musical imperfections—and for the radical act of disappearing into the mountains to find your voice.
The ancient art of storytelling through song? Nothing Concrete haven't just embraced it—they've given it a passport and sent it wandering through the world.