Get Cape Wear Cape Fly - 'Find The Time'
There's a hoodwink afoot. People are trying to make things be things which they are not, and it's causing confusion, civil unrest, and worst of all, it's forcing people to make bad decisions about why they like what they like. And this will never do. Sam Duckworth - or, as I like to call him, Get Jack Johnson, Add Wig, Fly - has managed to appear in magazines as varied as MOJO and Kerrang!, by doing something which does not ROCK and is not CLASSIC ROCK, and I can't really figure it out.
I mean at first I sort of got that he's doing acoustic, stripped back versions of sort of emo-y sort of songs (I know, I know, it's like I'm writing for Vague magazine, please bear with me). I mean his swooning, romance-gorged music is not a million miles away from that of Bright Eyes, say, although he doesn't really have Conor Oberst's intensity or melodic flair. But he's not Panic! At The Disco or My Chemical Romance spiky with it, he's not even gravelly like Staind, so the Kerrang! vote of support was strange.
Then there's his voice. A hoarse adenoidal bleat from a throat full of pillows, which is fine if you're trying to soothe, but just plain irritating on the upbeat numbers, of which this is one. He's not even got the kind of lyrical genius which means you just have to stop what you're doing and listen because you just can't believe anyone would say that stuff (there's a mid-'90s indie band called that you'd be wise to investigate further, if this is sounds like your sort of thing).
But there again, he seems like a really good bloke, y'know? Passionate about racism (he's campaigned against it, in case that read like it was his part-time hobby), witty, friendly, un-precious and generally down-to-earth. And his music is very charming and pleasant, so you don't really want to find yourself slagging it off like it's an offense to the ears God gave you. That just seems unduly harsh.
So, what's to do? I can't really find anything very nice to say about this record, cos it seems half-baked. The good bits are pinched from other acoustic troubadours - and we're really not short of them at the moment - and the rest of it flops about somewhere between over-earnest and under-done. But it's a good try by a nice man, and the people who love it are going to be really cross with anyone who slags it off, and I can't say I would blame them if it were something I did like...
...stuff it, do your own star rating. I'm going to get a biscuit and listen to Operator Please.
Download: Out now
CD Released: March 3rd
(Fraser McAlpine)
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