Ask the hip kids what they’re listening to and the chances are not one of them will utter the name Harry Nilsson. I doubt the Beach Boys would get mentioned by many either. But the trouble with being hip is that it’s easy to miss out on some quality stuff. Granted, raiding my parents’ record collection landed me with Phil Collins, Barbara Dixon and Steeleye fucking Span, but you can’t choose your parents or your musical education I suppose.
Anyway, the point is that Luke Saxton is a 19 year old guy from York who has been recording albums at home since he was 11, and claims to have recorded some 24 albums and 400 songs worth of material to date.
The press release is spot on when it suggests that ‘Sunny Sadness’ sounds like it could be straight out of The Beach Boys or Harry Nilsson’s back catalogue (and for those who don’t know, Nilsson is a whole lot more than ‘Without You’, the Badfinger track slaughtered by Mariah Carey in 1994).
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‘Sunny Sadness’ is appropriately titled, reflecting as it does the bittersweet contrasts of the songs, in which the thoughtful, reflective lyrics are often offset with bright, breezy tunes. Tinges of quintessentially English Britpop (I’m talking Kinks, not Blur) filter through the songs, which are disarmingly simple in their arrangements and strong on melody.
The result is an album that’s honest, accessible and extremely listenable – and as such, I’d recommend listening to it!
Luke Saxton Online
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