(Rough Trade)
Some time ago,Thomas Cohen was the frontman of serrated post-punkers SCUM. He left the band intending to go solo, but then the unthinkable happened when his wife, and Peaches Geldof,died. His eventual solo debut, Bloom Forever, or details his grief in sometimes gnawingly open-wound detail. But it’s also the sound of a 25-year-faded channelling that turmoil into a novel musical identity. The louche (disreputable) blues and oddball sax of Honeymoon,the Wild Horses-by-way-of-Scott-Walker Mother Mary, and novel Morning Comes’ subtle catch on Harvest Moon evoke the sun-dappled ditties that soundtracked 1970s California – a freshened up, and slightly unhinged catch on Americana. It’s hard not to listen to Country Home and its lyrics “I will hold on to / The fragment of me that is in adore with you” without feeling like you’ve read a diary entry you shouldn’t have. Elsewhere,however, the album is surprisingly sunny: these are songs for festival picnic blankets as well as for holding on to your loved ones.
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Source: theguardian.com