Trails Out of Gloom, the fourth album by Vancouver, British Columbia-based proggers Fen is my first experience with the band. Their first record for Ripple Music, it’s a collection of melancholic, graceful, sincere melodies, in the vein of some of what Opeth reaches toward from time to time, but more in line with Judgement-era Anathema in its scope and casual straddling of the borders between different aspects of its sound, able to switch from heaviness to a more subtle presentation as smoothly as going one measure to the next. I get the sense this isn’t a sudden development for Fen, who’ve been together since 1998, and that their making it sound easy on Trails Out of Gloom is actually the result of years of work and growth. That’s usually how it goes, anyway.

The band is centered around its two founding guitarists, David Samuel Levin and Douglas Alan Harrison, who also provides the multiple layers of vocals that pop up on tracks like the Katatonia-esque “Find That One” and “The World is Young,” which reminds of Porcupine Tree’s darker moments without being entirely derivative. Trails Out of Gloom starts off with its title track, showing off the acoustic roots of Levin and Harrison’s songwriting and giving Harrison a chance to show off his formidable vocal range. It’s also one of the album’s first missteps, as Harrison reaches at times to a kind of falsetto wail that stands out awkwardly from the soothing music behind, not helped at all by being pushed so far forward in the mix. It doesn’t come up all the time, that is, he doesn’t do it on every song, but it holds back the otherwise driving later cut “End of the Dream” as well, and for a band four albums into their career, it’s a kind of surprising issue to take on, and I don’t doubt it’s one that could turn a lot of people off to Fen altogether.

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