I love this song, I miss the Aislers Set. I wrote a little bit about this ten years ago:
"I made a mistake last night/glad that I'm alive," Linton sings at the start of 'What Fades First' and, to quote a teacher of mine, the problem gets deeper and more complex from that point.
“What Fades First” is actually a pretty wild song, it basically keeps adding sounds to itself as it goes along, getting bigger and louder and more beautiful (I had a vague feeling there was some simile for this in the natural world, and it turned out what I was thinking of was a decorator crab piling sponges on its exterior).
I realize I have a weakness for songs like this, where the songwriter snaps components into place to build to a big ending (one other example of this I was thinking about the other day—Ted Leo’s “Timorous Me,” which has maybe one of the most effective bass guitar entrances that I can remember), though “What Fades First” is truly extraordinary. Amy Linton has such a distinctive, bright voice. It’s one of those voices you can listen to forever.
Below is a one-off release that’s on the band’s bandcamp page, “Big Ocean.” It’s a beautiful little tune: Linton’s voice, plus guitar and banjo. “Float up/my love is open/Big ocean/big ocean/big ocean.”