It is Tom Vek’s curse that his music evokes nostalgia for our favourite trailblazers. The ramshackle indie-blues he peddles reminds you of a younger, more daring Beck. Those funeral-bell rhythms and caffeinated vocals offer traces of Talking Heads and Franz Ferdinand. His penchant for the odd mouth organ solo, meanwhile, has seen him tagged as “the new Dylan”.
Predictably, Vek – a 23 year old Londoner who recorded his first album in his father’s garage – sounds nothing like Franz, Beck or the Bobster himself. But what he does share with these illustrious artists is their mocking insouciance, their feckless distaste for boundaries.
One would require a fistful of (contradictory) adjectives to nail the essence of Vek’s debut. We Have Sound is simultaneously a stylistic salad-bowl and a dispatch of remarkable cohesiveness. Vek veers between genres as though in the grip of an attention deficit yet never sounds like anyone but himself.
Over the record’s opening third, the singer has the air of a busker stumbling upon a trove of sleazy melodies; ‘I Ain’t Saying My Goodbyes’ prospers on choppy harmonies and dislocated white-funk, while ‘A Little Word In Your Ear’ fuses nervy guitar ticks and a booming hook.
As We Have Sound grows more comfortable in its eccentricities, Vek starts taking risks – ‘The Lower The Sun’ begins as a fawning Radiohead pastiche, then erupts into a knife-twist chorus that splenetically parodies St Thom and his disciples.
For ‘On The Road’ Vek morphs into a ringmaster of doom, his delivery segueing from thunderous lilt to chilling croon while minor chords mutter and creak in the undergrowth. The track serves as a touchstone for the entire album, a moment where fragile beauty and something dark and disconcerting meet in a sweltering caress.