If you look at the “Influences” section of July Skies’ website, you won’t see any bands listed. Although the band’s musical influences are readily apparent within the opening minutes of Dreaming of Spires (e.g., Cocteau Twins, The Durutti Column, Slowdive), bandleader Antony Harding instead lists such things as “lost youth,” “endless childhood summers,” “the romance of the heavens well after closing time,” “time spent amongst long summer grasses,” “grey English rain filled skies,” and “the sound of children playing faraway.”

As you might infer, Dreaming of Spires is suffused with a delicate, autumn-soaked nostalgia that more cynical souls will undoubtedly find precious, even cloying. But Harding’s gossamer-y music is so earnest and pure in its intent, and so otherworldly in its execution, that I found it instantly entrancing when I first heard it — and still do, more than twenty years later.

Opening number “Coastal Station” finds Harding sighing “It’s another autumn day” overly lazily strummed guitars while “Swallows and Swifts” and “East Kennet Skies” are clearly indebted to Vini Reilly’s deft style. “Garden Constellations” features more of Harding’s sighing vocals, wordless this time, set adrift over placid electronics and languid guitars while “Corinivm”‘s fluttering electronic tones sound like a ghostly radio broadcast from your childhood.

I’ve yet to cross the Atlantic and visit the UK. But just know that if/when I do, I fully intend to take a day to meander through its pastoral countryside, preferably when it’s a little drizzly outside, with Dreaming of Spires (and the rest of July Skies’ too-short catalog) as the soundtrack.