Album title:
Wire Waltz
Artist:
Last Town Chorus
Label:
Loose Music
The Last Town Chorus are arranged round the centrepiece of Megan Hickey's voice and lap-steel guitar; they're players of sleepy music with songs of sleepy feelings, and while the band's debut had moments of fierceness, Wire Waltz is all smoothed down to prettiness. This is fine on long evenings before the fire, but when the hearth has smouldered to cinders, there's not much substance in Hickey's recordings. A cover of David Bowie's Modern Love will leave you comforted but, yes, snoring, and even the saunter of Wintering in Brooklyn feels more comatose than awake. It's not that there's something wrong with all this reverb and sighing, just that shimmer and want isn't enough to get us through the Autumn. Let's have songs that aren't merely pretty, but also strong. [Sean Michaels]