Postcards

Tom George
(Self-Released)

Music review by Richard Lewis 22/10/2013

First album by poet turned musician Tom George

Liverpool arts scene stalwart Tom George segues from performance poetry into music on self released debut LP Postcards.

Piloted by clean-tone electric guitars and with George’s voice clear in the mix throughout, the songwriter is almost entirely self-sufficient musically, handling bass and drums and production duties with additional keys and guitar work supplied by engineer Jeff Jepson.

The title, by accident or design, evokes the jangling early eighties Glasgow-based indie label of the same name, home to Orange Juice and Aztec Camera.

The references to 1980s indie are in abundance with opening cut ‘Drifter’, which inhabits the same sonic territory as The Stone Roses circa 1987 and the sound minted on the ‘Sally Cinnamon’ single.

‘Hey Tree’ is reminiscent of Mike Scott’s more downbeat moments away from The Big Music with The Waterboys, while the acoustic guitar and claves led ‘Your Wild Imagination’ possesses the same home-recorded vibe of early solo Paul McCartney.

One specific criticism of the LP is the length of some tracks, as several cuts cross the five minute barrier when they could have been compressed into shorter forms, with some fine-tuning of the song structures called for.

‘Postcard’, a reimaged version of second track ‘Postcard From Your Heart’, sung by Norwegian singer Ragz, glides past on her high in the mix vocal, spare acoustic guitar strums, and what sounds like sampled mandolins. The end result coming close to sounding like indie doyens The Sundays.

The reflective ‘How Will They Know’ closes proceedings, a languid piece underscored by African percussion, that stretches over several verses before ebbing away on its acoustic and slide guitar motif.

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