Eight years after their debut All That We Had We Stole, Patch & The Giant are back. Fragments was not supposed to take this long. This collection was nearing completion in early 2020 before the world got turned upside down. Even as things began to get back to something resembling normal, the band found it difficult to pick up where they had left off, and it was not until last summer that principal songwriter Luke Owens stumbled upon the Dropbox folder containing the recordings and the project was revived.
But despite the long wait and the convoluted road back, as soon as Owens’ rasping vocals kick in over the frenetic opening bars of ‘Fire & The Flood’ it’s almost like they’ve never been away – that familiar cosy feel of their easy songwriting and rich storytelling is here to sweep you along again. But Fragments has a different feel to its predecessor – after so long, how could it not?
When they first began to emerge more than a decade ago Patch had a reputation for intense gigging, honing their craft and their sound night after night on stage, and that fed into the collection of rousing anthems that became All That We Had. This time there has been a studio-oriented approach, leading to a more polished sound, richer and more varied as they play with the possibilities of harmonising violin, cello and flugelhorn. As Owens put it, the result is “more disciplined, more refined, more grown up”.
There are still big moments, not least on the opener or the powerful finale to ‘Wolves in the Water’, but Fragments leans more towards the softer, tender moments.
There is the tense melancholy of first single ‘Bones’ and the sad lament of ‘A Lonely View’, but the highlight is ‘Birds In His Pocket’ – a heartfelt personal song Owens wrote about his great-grandfather who would nurse wounded creatures back to health, having been told the tales his nan.
With only eight songs, clocking in at a little over half an hour, Fragments is short, certainly after so long away. But it is a welcome return for a group who have taken the time to rediscover themselves, and find something new, after a period of significant change.