Herman Dune - Next Year in Zion

David-Ivar Herman Dune claims that this is the first album he's recorded when he was happy, and the instrumentation bears him out: upbeat brass bubbles under the surface, Dave Tattersall of the Wave Pictures contributes clean, virtuoso lead guitar lines and bandmate Neman's clip-clopping percussion would give Eeyore a spring in his step if someone surreptitiously added it to his iPod. Yet this is a record characterised by absence: brother André has gone off to start a new life as Stanley Brinks and with him have gone "the dots from the u". The lead track is named My Home Is Nowhere Without You and the mournful Someone Knows Better Than Me with its naive disappointment at ready-made Ingmar Bergman obituaries, seems like it might also be a disguised eulogy. On its predecessor, Giant, André's songs were the dark, brooding counterpoints to David-Ivar's home-sick, love-struck but playful Dylan/Cohen wordplay. On Next Year in Zion there is only the latter, and enjoyable as that is, the absence is felt. [Milo McLaughlin]