A nice album with a bit of a dodgy beginning to it...
Up until 'Oh True' this album is complete, complete, complete rubbish, but then it gets a little better... Actually it gets exponentially better, 'Oh True' is quite a nice song, very much in the vain of Jack Johnson or some other member of that pseudo-singer-songwriter club. The start though, 'Come On Come On' which repeats its main refrain "I'd really like to help you but I can't" way way way too much and 'Beaten Down' with its silly sounding electric guitar and 'cool' sneery vocals, a song following the pattern of Kylie's 'Did It Again' but not coming close to matching it, makes for one of the worst starts of an album I've encountered and if I didn't have to keep listening I wouldn't have found that the rest of the record is relievingly alright.
There's no real logical link between these songs, they seem to flit style and make-up, some being rocky and others down-tempo, although centring round a structure of guitar chords and emphatic hum-along singing. 'My Back Issues' is a well tempered beachy slow one, sand flicking up through flip-flops, 'nother shrimp on the barbie sort of song. 'Sunset Sublet' is a nice subtle acoustic number that does well to capture the sunset mood, it is a soft lambaste ballad with a few oohs and ahs and some direct lyrics.
Certainly this album rises in standard as it progresses, maybe the beginning was a joke... When we get to 'Olivine' and 'Never Leave' we get to thinking of Death Cab For Cutie, Mark Geary or Josh Ritter, it's a complete reversal. 'You Got To Go' is nice, it's simple, with a man and his guitar and a bit of piano, and it's effective, your head bobs, your brow knits and you give a nod of approval, 'Yeah,' you say, 'yeah, yeah.'
There's a few famous appearances on here, from the likes of Joan Wasser and Kevin March et al; you realise that Dave Derby is part of quite a respectable coterie, but that aside you're still left with a bit of a shrug. Occasionally the words are very good here, occasionally the music grabs you a bit, occasionally it all works well together, but the operative word has been 'nice' here tonight ladies and gentlemen, and that's really all it is, that most common and hated of expressions, nice, it is nice, but that start... bah...