THE LEISURE SOCIETY'S Nick Hemming is a man with an excellent pedigree. Hailing from Burton-on-Trent, he grew up with influential film-makers/actors Shane Meadows and Paddy Considine and learned his craft courtesy of a stint with the under-rated Telescopes.
Your reviewer mostly remembers him from his contribution to the soundtrack of Shane Meadows' great 'Dead Men's Shoes', but his Wilkommen debut 'The Sleeper' proves that he knows more than a thing or three about wonderful song craft and has no intention of hiding his light under anyone's bushel in the future.
'The Sleeper' is simply crammed with beauty. Opening track 'A Fighting Chance' mirrors Hemming's OST credentials with its' atmospheric strings, accordion, guitar and zither (?) opening, before it begins to gather pace. Like many of the songs here, it opens out beautifully and peddles a welcome positivity (“gonna change my circumstance/ give myself a fighting chance”), ending up falling somewhere between Tunng's otherworldliness and James Yorkston's warmth.
Pretty much all of what follows nuzzles up to perfection. Hemming's voice is gentle, yet commanding and his broadly pastoral songs have a grace and power which is rare in much contemporary songwriting. Songs like 'The Last of the Melting Snow' and 'We Were Wasted' are especially stately. '….Snow' is a lovely, woodwind-assisted waltz while 'We Were Wasted”s title might suggest a Libertines-style thrash, but actually owes more to, say, the timeless bucolic feel of Nick Drake's 'River Man'. As pop songs go, it's almost Pre-Raphaelite in design, and it certainly makes a change to be referencing the 1860s rather than the 1960s in this game.
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Ironically, Hemming's muse can also occasionally reference Pop's halcyon decade, almost without trying. For example, the mellifluous, chiming feel of 'Save It For Someone Who Cares' could almost be an Anglophile Byrds, although it also has one of numerous dead-on string arrangements on hand to cut a swathe at just the right moment. It's one of many places where both an arrangement and a song dovetail to nigh-on perfection.
Nick Hemming and his talented cohorts are on to a really good thing here. 'The Sleeper' balances intimacy and grandeur and comes across as one of the most complete records this writer has heard in quite some time. Even discerning loners might want to join this particular Society, it seems.
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