Gareth - 11/15/2010

Very different from the guise of Maximo Park, the band from which Paul smith is the lead vocalist. This selection of songs recorded by Paul over the last 5years that make up this, his first solo album are slower, less guitar orientated and well perhaps maybe more arty.
Clever use of sentence structure and words that are, well, maybe not used so much in the usual realms of the pop world.
In some songs there is a real stripped back vulnerability in Paul's voice which is endearing. However some songs such as 'Improvement/denouement', Alone, I would've dropped' and 'I wonder if' the lyrics obviously mean something, however as the listener I found it hard to connect with exactly what the message was. Sometimes there seems to be an attempt to make the lyrics and words too clever and therefore any connectionfor the listener is lost. There seems to be too much synth, feedback and echo in places on the production of this album and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be enough change of pace on the album, with all tracks keeping to a similar pace. 'North Atlantic Drift' and 'Out Lady of Lourdes', are the most well produced songs on the album, with other recordings sounding like a little like demo quality. All in all and after the first listen, I would say this could be a grower but I'm not counting on it.