Separated By The Sea

Those – like me – who are allergic to acoustic wielding folky types are hereby advised to proceed towards the exit in an orderly fashion. You are not going to like it here. Hailing from a village outside York, Findlay Brown professes to be enamoured of The Band, Love and Krautrock amongst other A-list musical influences, although precious little eclecticism is to be found on his debut album, which is a rather one-note collection of formulaic acoustica.
I approached Separated By The Sea with a resolutely open mind, determined not to be put off by any innate prejudices, but the song titles alone (‘Loneliness I Fear’, ‘Losing The Will To Survive’, ‘Don’t You Know I Love You’) would surely cause all but hardcore fans of the genre to throw the record aside in despair and seek out a copy of Nitzer Ebb’s Greatest Hits. Delicately plucked acoustic guitar, lovelorn vocals, an all-round atmosphere of “cidery traditionalism” (Brown’s own description); if it all sounds disconcertingly like the soundtrack to a credit card commercial, that’s because it is – the track ‘Come Home’ was utilised by Mastercard for their Christmas advertising campaign.
To be fair, Brown does on occasion approximate the sublimely atmospheric Americana of generally over-looked acts like, er, America (of ‘A Horse With No Name’ fame), particularly on tracks such as ‘But You Love Me’ and ‘Down Among The Dead Men’. Overall, though, this is an album strictly for diehard connoisseurs of singer-songwriters. For my part, I’m off to rummage out that copy of Now That’s What I Call Industrial Noise Thrash.