The first three tracks of this jam-packed release from Erswell all cropped up on last year’s Walking In The Sky EP; Feel Good Sensation plunges you head first into a dizzyingly upbeat pop tune that’s also like a rush of mid-90s indie nostalgia, somewhere between baggy Ocean Colour Scene tustling with the quirky sounds of Space; Shine Bright has a laidback swagger, whilst that EP’s title track has the sneery, tambourine shaking cool of Black Grape.
Centuries finds Erswell moving closer to the trancey dancey vibes of The Music, alas the repeated vocals feel a little lazy rather than euphoric, whilst his guitar is decently jubiliant and meaty when required, the whole track feels a little unfocused and awkward. This similar approach is a little more effective on Silence is Golden with its twinkly piano line, though some of the drum stop-starts are jarring. The wonky stylings of Champions work better, Erswell’s voice falters here and there, but the erratic arrangment is endearing rather than distancing, with a pleasingly rough and ragged quality to the song’s occasional pause.
Meanwhile Summer Days is a little like a peculiar avant garde Prince track, a bittersweet organ line and Erswell cooing ‘I lost my soul in the summertime, I never did quite get it back.’ Unfortunately it suffers from a bit of a sloppy ending, but a lot of these songs feel more like the purging of ideas and experiments rather than utterly finessed works so a lot of those foibles can easily be forgiven, though for a casual listener they may be distracting.
New Calm and Las Vegas find Erswell in a strange middle ground between Kid Rock and Jack Johnson, his chorus on the latter is summery cheese and a more polished version could inevitably be title music for some sort of reality show. Though both tracks have their wobbly points they’re indications of Erswell’s straight songwriting ability in a scruffy state. The record’s title track is less successul a dreary Richard Ashcroft-like ballad that is a confused mess of guitars, layered vocals that strain for anthemic refrains that ultimately goes nowhere.
The frustrated guitar riffage of City of Blinding Lights has a flavour of the awesome Manchester band Monster Island, though Erswell’s stream of consciousness vocal has more of a addled Ian Brown feel to it, the two don’t exactly compliment one another, it’s easy to see what Erswell was attempting but this track misses the mark feeling a little forced and artificial for a track that should end up as a giddy, lively jam. Betwixt has the kind of simplistic lyrics that Liam Gallagher frequently rattles out, resorting at times to mantras of ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…’ Too often Erswell seems to fall into similar patterns that feel a little beholden to his musical influences, and occasionally he resorts to lyrical patterns that feel targeted towards stadium crowds but that aim is too forced resulting in potentially uplifting choruses falling flat. The grumpily, sozzled strummed repeat of the refrain at the end of Betwixt works far better than the bulk of the track.
Write Your Luck has a rather lovely descending keyboard line intermingled with acoustic guitar, it would be nice if Erswell brought a little more restraint to his vocal at times as his music has the strength to carry the spirit of the song itself at times. Included afterwards are two live versions of New Calm and Betwixt which don’t really add much more to the mix.
This record is an exorcism of ideas for Erswell, an outpouring of a couple of summers of song-writing and by that rationale it is more of a blueprint than a finished work, there’s plenty of potential for some decent somewhat backward facing pop music here (I mean pop like The Charlatans, not Steps), and with a bit of thought a number of songs here could be squeezed from coal to diamonds.
[Rating:3]
