Paul Goodwin - Scars

Before Everett True departed Britain for Australia, he was championing a collection of shambolic musicians who were labelled 'British anti-folk', all based in and around the London/Brighton area. It was never clear though where the demarcation lay between traditional folk, of the sort found up and down the country, and its trendy metropolitan antithesis. Paul Goodwin, as a staple of the Cambridge folk scene, probably wouldn't be considered subversive enough to be truly 'anti': he doesn't need the genre buzzword. Imagine David Bowie falling in love with introspective acoustic playing instead of glam rock and you're almost there – indeed, Bowie might sound like Goodwin at 5am in the morning when he's sitting with his guitar, wondering what it's really all about. The production is a bit sterile – recording with Steve Albini, as Nina Nastasia did, would sort that out – but the songs are genuinely emotive.[Ewen Millar]