These are personal songs of everyday things, sung in a conversational voice with simple guitar and hints of orchestral accompaniment. The scale is small and there is a polite avoidance of musical bravado or excess of any kind. They are unassuming and mild, like BELLE AND SEBASTIAN in their earliest stages. They sing of things that happen and things that you see and hear while they are happening. They are sung by people who could be your best friends, quite easily, They would be best friends if you lived nearby, and had similarly troubled perceptions of the coarseness of life and the possibility that things could be gentler, more considerate and more aesthetically pleasing. And more romantic.
I have a lot of sympathy with this outlook. Romanticism is something we could all own up to if a harsh contemporary culture wasn't bullying us towards ever-cruder weekends of binge-life crisis.
Jonny Davies writes the lyrics by which the album stands or falls. The music, it has to be said, is a quickly drawn sketch pad of suggestions and ideas for later development - charming and interesting in some parts, but cluttered in others by too-often repeated themes or undeveloped doodles. At this stage I'm happy with the idea that the minimalist aesthetic is a deliberate part of a subtext that sees showing off as a crude distraction from the desired romance, immediacy and open-mindedness. There is a risk, worth taking, that the tentative playing introduces an uncertainty or discomfort where none is intended.
The lyrical mood is what the music draws attention to.
"The Sun On My Right" laments from line one: "Not for the first time, your cold dead morning eyes, your .breath, tells of dark rum, forever drunk in bed". It's sung with the sadness of someone who wants to love, but who is pushed away by the passing out and the mumbling. "It won;t get warmer till we're across the border" choruses a male/female duet, accompanied by Sophie Barnes' artfully swaying trumpet.
"Anne Sexton" is up up-tempo version of the same basic tune as "The Sun On My Right" with an understated country tinge in a repetitive guitar line. The trumpet sings out. The vocal line is a bit swallowed and indistinct. But there is some pretty stuff in the middle section with a glockenspiel and melodica sounds.
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The previously reviewed Single "A Good Café on George Street" is a strong song - first cousin to the tune being used in Anne Sexton. After two slightly unsteady tracks it's the song that sets the tone for the album. I do like "Reveries" that follows. "whisper the words out", they sing. And they are sung so gently I have to lean forward to catch them. "London Pleasures" is brasher and thumpier by comparison, but keeps to the pattern of non-stop guitar repetition, gentle voices and a good burst of trumpet.
"A Few Words of Farewell" treats the illusions and dreams of love to evocative phrases like "the blank space where the fragments lay" and "I need quiet to learn in these pages, I need quiet to love". A mournful harmonium sound breathes alongside the reluctantly fingered acoustic guitar. It's rather nice. The album's longest song "Waters Edge" rounds off its modest 32 minutes playing time with a return to the lilting style of the opening songs.
And in the end, I'm in at least two minds about the whole thing. Perhaps I would have waited a little longer before issuing an album. Written and tried out another dozen songs maybe. But this is THE ROSIE TAYOR PROJECT'S album not mine, and my best guess is that it will generate absolutely nothing so dull as a consensus.
Indie, in this case, still means independent - in all senses of the word.
www.myspace.com/therosietaylorproject
www.badsneakers.co.uk
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