This LP opens beguilingly, male and female vocals over a sustained organ note on Living Hell, before a subtle minimal beat and synthy-strings join this wistful and maudlin opener. It’s an impressive curtain raiser for this record, the brainchild of Luke Stidson from Somerset and the chap responsible for the now defunct Exercise1 record label (who released the fantastic 50minutes record).
Second track Janie I Will Only Let You Down is a more country-tinged tune with twinkly glockenspiels, it’s a spritely yet oddly slight number that sort of dances on similar strands to The Boy Least Likely To. It’s followed by the laidback swagger of If They Could Only See Us Now They’d Swear We Were Ghosts, Stidson’s voice fragile and sweet, clearly influenced by the late great Mark Linkous, as he gently coos; ‘You’d kill yourself just for thinking of me.’ Fortunately the song work well despite undoubtedly being very much in thrall to Linkous, it has a certain sad optimism and Stidson’s lyrics are touching and honest.
Meanwhile there’s a flavor of Coconut Records to Ex-Lovers, a piano driven ballad with Stidson admirably wearing his heart on his sleeve with an utter lack of pretension, and a simple beauty to his choice of lyrics; ‘I’m mending all I’ve done/All the times I thought this is the one.’ It’s a shame when the strings creep in, because they almost lay the poignancy on a bit too thickly, when the stripped down production was far more successful. It segues quite nicely into the jaunty Monkey Is Singe, though it is another Sparklehorse-alike (the production on Stidson’s vocal inparticular), and whilst he does a fine job of carrying the torch it’d be nice if he ploughed his own furrow a bit more, such as on the previous and opening tracks.
June or The Devile Waiting, The Seasoned Times is a somewhat disposable little tune with a lovely quirky piano and organ coda tacked onto the end, there’s nothing particularly wrong with the song but it doesn’t make much of an impression. The Bees is stronger, it’s very much a homage to Grandaddy, but it has a nice chorus and builds towards a dizzy, fun crescendo with some pleasingly cheeky production flourishes here and there. The delightfully titled How I Lost My Somerset Accent has a good, big twinkly country sound, for an album cobbled together over a year in various living rooms, sheds, garages, barns and a pub there’s a rather wonderful Brian Wilson-esque production at work. Though he may fall foul of being a bit of a sound-alike at times Stidson knows how to craft big, breezy, bright soundscapes.
Penultimate track It’s Hard To Find A Good Woman’s Hand to Hold has an air of Bright Eyes (particularly We Are Nowhere and It’s Now), though it lacks the lyrical bite of earlier tunes its a nice change of pace before the peculiarly crackly drum-beat that kicks off Alameda Sleepwalking. This final tracks has a strange synth hook, pushing the Sparklehorse-influence into a space-age 80s direction (somewhat similar to Welsh electronic-artist Jakokoyak), but it’s a charming pop-sci-fi hybrid and a rousing conclusion to this decent debut LP.
There’s a lot to like about this album, it’s impressively produced, but currently it feels like too much of a tribute to certain artists rather than something that’s merely influenced by them. Stidson is undoubtedly a talented musician and song-writer, but he seems to still be on the journey to really finding his own individual sound, however it’s a journey worth taking with him and this record has a lot to offer for fans of alt-folk and quirky indie-pop.
[Rating:4]
