For their second album, Saso have come out of hiding and revealed themselves to be Jim Lawler, writer, and Ben Rawlins, producer, two Dublin-based musicians who have created the gentle, spacious and often stunning music that makes up I Can Do Nice.
From the eerily atmospheric intro of ‘Trapped In Ice’ to the subdued strains of the closing ‘Blinds Down’, Lawler and Rawlins have crafted an album that veers from Sigur Ros-like glacial splendour to Radiohead’s gentler moments, via nods to Brian Eno, David Sylvian and Air.
Five of the 13 tracks here are instrumental, and these do have a decidedly movie score feel – indeed, much of Saso’s music has already featured in student films, and some of the out-takes from I Can Do Nice will be included on a soundtrack to an “imaginary film”, Residential, at a later date. However, it is on the vocal tracks where Rawlins and Lawler really lift themselves above the rabble of atmospheric electronic musos and grab you by the short and curlies.
‘Green Trees’ may lean a little towards the kind of adolescent soul-searching that Robert Smith used to do much better, but ‘Lost At Sea’ is one of the most gorgeous tracks I’ve had the pleasure of listening to this year: ‘Why Wait?’ is slightly edgier, thanks to its off-kilter rhythms and ghostly vocal effects. ‘Type A Jitters’ is an exercise in claustrophobic tension of which Thom Yorke would be justifiably proud, while the title track’s melancholy melody belies the black and bitter bile of the lyrics, “A city that is choking/ Coughing blood from its poisoned lung/ Willing slaves unplug all machines/ Identity homogenised”.
I Can Do Nice is usually intriguing, often captivating and rarely short of interesting: even at its worst, this is intelligent background music.