Le Tralala Club, France

Some people must have been irritated at my calling 2007 a bad year musically, and had a go at me for breaking good blog etiquette with my grumpiness, but I can, however, affirm that the beginning of 2008 is really getting me going, for between the start of January and mid-February no fewer than about six good albums have been released and it augurs well.

Today I want to talk about the fourth album from Songdog, a British trio.

This album is a joy from start to finish, a real revelation, Lyndon Morgans's voice is reminiscent of Kurt Wagner (Lambchop), Windmill or Mercury Rev, or, to give you a better idea, it combines the quiet
calm of the former with the slightly forced vibrato of the latter two. Musically you feel you could sometimes be listening to a not-so-melancholy Lambchop, other times a not-so-annoying Bright Eyes or the Bathers in folkie mode ....or any other possible combination of these groups and these adjectives. The wealth of instruments used gives a wide variety of different colours to the tracks (guitars, keyboards, piano, harmonica, banjo, mandolin, violin, cello, accordion, musical saw, tablas, percussion).

The melodies are terribly beautiful but without any sense of trying to ingratiate themselves upon the listener.

Me, I can't help returning to this record over and over, the next step will be to acquaint myself with its three predecessors.

If this doesn't feature among the ten best records of 2008 then the year will have turned out to be of a very rare vintage indeed!