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Review: 'BARBARISMS'
'Barbarisms'   

-  Label: 'Control Freak Kitten'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '6th October 2014'

Our Rating:
This assured, self titled debut album is the work of one American (Nicholas Faraone) and two Swedes (Tom Skantze and Robin Af Ekenstam).

The Stockholm-based Indie-folk trio present eleven songs in which a wry and very dry humour is accompanied by a detached perspective on life's everyday absurdities.

There's a raffish sophistication to lines like "I would have gone nuts for you in your salad days" (Pail Of Water) and a droll bitter-sweet world view is reflected in tracks like Macaulay Culkin On Pizza and the lead single Easier All The Time.

Faraone's voice has a Conor Oberst-like tremor that fits well with his penchant for literate song craft. His arty leanings can be gleaned from the fact that he writes songs named after Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Katherine Anne Porter and Picasso's wife Olga Khokhlova.

Other titles like A Wash Of Tea And Eyes and I Won The Nothing illustrate that sing-along ditties are not his stock-in-trade.

The drawback to such an elevated and, at times downright snidey, attitude is that there's not enough to seduce the casual listener.

The cleverness is of these songs is never in doubt but my feeling is that a couple of tunes with more direct and less ambiguous content would give the album a greater sense of compassion and balance.

Barbarisms' website
  author: Martin Raybould

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BARBARISMS - Barbarisms
cover art by William Chmielinski