findlaybrown-separatedbythesea music reviews Virgin Media
It would be easy to dismiss Yorkshire folkster Findlay Brown as just another chancer with the right sound at the right time. Thanks to the TV advertising agencies' current penchant for folk, he has followed the likes of kindred spirits Jose Gonzalez (Sony Bravia), Joanna Newsom (Orange) and Vashti Bunyan (T-Mobile) by providing the hauntingly melancholic Come Home as the soundtrack to MasterCard's Christmas ad.
But while there's no doubt Brown has a gift for such tender ad-friendly songsmithery, one listen to this debut, the Simon Lord-produced Separated By The Sea, reveals a new talent busting out beyond the pastoral confines of wimpy, whimsical acoustic folk – and with a background as a part-time bare-knuckle boxer whose introduction to guitar music was Hendrix, you'd be right to assume Nick Drake might not be Brown's only reference.
In fact, the intimate simplicity of Come Home is something of a misnomer among these 11 tracks. Employing at various points three-part harmonies, banjos, strings and slide guitars, many of Brown's songs (see Losing The Will To Survive and the epic Don't You Know I Love You) are reminiscent of the likes of Crosby, Stills and Nash or The Byrds, conveying the wide open expanses of the wild American countryside, far more than the hills and valleys of the county he grew up in.
Full of yearning and nostalgia, the sense of space rife across this album makes sense when you learn that Brown wrote these songs in order to win back his Danish girlfriend – she'd returned home after he'd acted (in his own words) like "a total nob". And while pain and suffering bleed all over Brown's seen-it-all-before vocals and lyrics, such real-life experience lends focus and a lack of self-pity to the performances, steering Separated... well clear of the weedy whinges of any Blunt- or Keane-isms.
The TV ad leg-up might grate but if it guarantees wider exposure to the kind of richly intimate folk album that appears so rarely, then so be it. Get this wonderful debut bought and whack it on your MasterCard.
