Prince Edward Island- This Day is a Good Enough Day
Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce the really rather intriguing and unexpected sun ray that emanates from my new favourite Scots, Prince Edward Island. "This Day Is A Good Enough Day" is an eleven track long slice of the beautifully mundane that speaks to us from a place of the most plain realities we've heard on record for some time.
They've appeared on the scene after 'accidentally winning' an Xfm Unsigned competition they hadn't known they had entered - and as soon as you listen to their unique approach to songwriting you can imagine that many of these songs weren't produced with a mass audience in mind. Lyrically, this is like an open diary of memories and events; but the mainstream-friendly poppy Get Cape-like sound you hear in songs like 'Let's Stay In and Go To Town' gives the tracks greater weight than perhaps even they intended. As you listen to the sweetly dour poetry and the accent from the highlands as undiluted as a double measure of single malt; the most striking resemblance is the Aidan Moffat. The dry humour that peppers the words throughout this record will be welcomed by his army of fans as the sense of melancholy and a razor sharp tongue become one of the most defining features of the Prince Edward Island sound. It is safe to assume that this wasn't as accidental as their competition win mind you, as the nod towards the Scottish genius in the line 'I can't stand being drunk so I drink and sing Arab Strap' in the opening track might suggest.
The key aspect that has meant that the gruff, scathing perspectives of love and life don't become like a half hour long Frankie Boyle-like rant is the perfect balance of light to shade. The occasional curse may be spat out, but it feels entirely appropriate. 'Sex in the morning, I'm coughing, you're yawning. We stop for a kiss, a piss and a cigarette' can sound as beautifully poetic to the ears as a Shakespearean sonnet. Then there's also the colourful sounds of the most psychedelic tinged tracks that the gorgeously other-worldly Flaming Lips would be pleased to partake in. This is a gorgeously rich and multi-dimensional record that steps away from the notion of the 'ordinary' when it comes to the process of songwriting, but celebrates it within its lyricism.