Beachcomber's Windowsill [CD]

The Oxford four/six-piece's much-tipped, mostly home-recorded debut is steeped in dreamy whimsy and joyful beauty. It's the sound of a summer spent frolicking around the sun-dappled hedgerows of an idyllic English countryside where time is slow and animals can probably speak.

Their lyrics suggest an almost child-like, wide-eyed yet exuberant view of the world–falling in love is "zorbing through the streets" (first single, the buoyant Zorbing), and sheaves of paper are piles of "A4 snowflakes" (We Are the Battery Human). It's in the music too, and not only in the swelling strings, triumphant trumpetings and the harmonies that could make a choir weep, but also in an enthusiastic commitment to unusual, though subtle, instrumentation. "Hmm, that track needs a bit more carrot-chopping in it," isn't something that crosses most bands' minds, or indeed, those of their listeners; but to singer and guitarist Brian Briggs and his chums, it's clearly important.

It all adds to Stornoway's charm, and charm they have in mountains. It's hard not to be felled by the utter gorgeousness of this record. The Belle and Sebastian-like Boats and Trains, all running keys and soaring vocals, makes frustrated love sound truly captivating, while the plaintive The Coldharbour Road (think Guillemots sung by Tim Booth) drags you to the shoreline by your heart as former ornithologist Briggs intones, "I am a seabird / You are the Arctic ocean". In contrast, the bluegrass-scented banjo ditty We are the Battery Human, a kind of reined-in Gorky's which wittily exposes how bound we are to office life, makes you long for a hoedown.

They don't, unlike some of their folkie compadres, do over-earnest or twee, although they get chummier with the chintz on closer, Long Distance Lullaby, which is reminiscent of James at their blandest. But by then it doesn't matter–you've already been seduced by an album, which, when the current nu-folk mongers have faded or bought a boarding ticket for another bandwagon, you'll still want to hear. --Alix Buscovic

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