There’s nothing to get excited about on the surface. Go on, scratch it. Maudlin acoustic tap-alongs, 4/4 beats, tales of rotten loves and life straying off the tracks. It’s the ingredients of a scene that for its chosen moments a few years ago nobody broke a heartstring forgetting about in a hurry. But just listen. That colloquially mesmeric, warm, leathery, North-Western English vocal twang. It’s like John Lennon clambered to his feet and staggered off into the New York night with a hole in his back, stowed away in freight, sailed back to Liverpool and spent the last 23 years living in a cramped council flat with Yoko, spending his dole money on fags, forgetting to take the bins out and yelling at her for getting in the way of Coronation Street. It’s the sort of voice that has history and scars. And it’s the way he tells them, mugging your attention.
If only Badly Drawn Boy amounted to half as much as I Am Kloot, after the half-hearted frivolity and indulgent humour, he’d not need to hide behind his headgear. Actually, they must be about the only band left in the area that didn’t pick up bit-work as his backing band. They would have only laid his shortcomings bare. This album, probably more so than its striking predecessor ‘Natural History’, is barren and truthful and wedged open for all to see the bones of their honest dysfunction. You surely wouldn’t want to be John Bramwell, but to be in his shoes just for a bit seems like the most enchanting and dramatic proposition, given the thrilling, coarse poetry with which he openly reflects on his life. And the clarity of this allows you just that.
Turin Brakes sit in the corner of the pub nursing a pair of stouts and mumbling in a frequency only audible to each other. I Am Kloot go through the optics, twice, and offer the entire room out with a splintered pool cue. “Hey, could you stand another drink, I’m better when I don’t think, seems to get me through” he reflects on ‘Proof’. This is clever Brit-folk with a bad taste in its mouth, downing another one anyway. The harsh infectious tick-tock blues of ‘3ft Tall’ could be a lost Beatles track, all ‘Come Together’ poise and ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ pop. And it’s a damn sight better than whatever rediscovered classic they’ve tarted up for release this year themselves. If you do go beneath the surface you’ll easily discover one of the UK’s most dazzling hidden gems.