Beautiful vocals, not much else.
It may be one of the archetypal tunes that football fans and bands blare out and it may have marked the low point of Blur's recorded output but the term 'The Great Escape' is universal meaning something for everything so its going to take a special song to live up to the grand nature of the title.
Patrick Watson has a downbeat number on his hands and before the first ten seconds have passed, the listener is immediately thinking about Andrew & The Johnsons. Okay, the piano makes this an obvious, if lazy, comparison but when Watson starts to sing, you just can't help but compare. Good voices are plentiful in the modern world but on first listen, Patrick Watson has the potential to be bigger and better than this. If first impressions can be built upon, then this soft-dreamlike delivery can propel Watson to bigger things, especially given the current trend for torch-song singers and cracked beauty.
If there is a let-down, it comes in the fact that the song is a bit on the light side, theres no great hook or selling point and with a less accomplished singer; the track would probably disappear from view without a murmur of interest. As it is, theres enough hear to entice the public to come back for more but hopefully Patrick Watson will have something more to offer than this delicate and beautiful, if moderately underwhelming, number. It doesn't offer a great escape but theres a lot of hope for more to come.