Lonely Ghosts - Don't Get Lost or Hurt

In making Don’t Get Lost or Hurt, Tom Denny has attempted to create an album imbibed with the ambition and fuck-you angst of youth; in parts an electronic head-spin off the back of cider binges in the park, in others an acoustic comedown sprawled across the bedroom floor. The issue with Denny’s hedonistic party pieces is the sense of over-stylisation which pervades, sounding in the main like Bloc Party filtered through an episode of Skins. The Unpopular Future’s frenetic electro-clash hurl rages like a panic attack in the dark, whilst It’s Time To Wake Up’s lazy rise turns from shuffling lo-fi dawn to grainy, demo-tape b-side surplus, as it loops out in mind-numbing facileness. Though opening track So Young, So Beautiful is moulded much in the same image, there is in parts a swirling - and fleeting - romanticism which wins out and proves that Denny isn’t entirely lost.[Paul Neeson]