Uncut

Three years ago, Skyscraper National Park heralded the arrival of Hayden Desser as heir to the mumbling miserablism of Smog's Bill Callahan. Like the latter, Toronto-born Hayden's nagging melodies and deadpan delivery occupy their own peculiar kingdom. His fourth LP finds him applying sonic bluster to the usual sad-slow creep. "Hollywood Ending", for example, is a raucous tale of being caught up in a blockbuster outside his front door.

Already Uncut-endorsed via two fine LPs as head of wistful country types Horse Stories, Burke's solo debut finds him in intimate, hushed repose. His acoustic guitar fingering is highly expressive, be it woven into delicate sound webs on the love-torn "Cigarettes", delving into the country-blues of "Long Face" or lighting up "Which Train's She On?" with flashes of slide. Burke's voice remains his crowning glory, though, wringing nuance from the simplest of melodies.

Following the success of 2003's inaugural compilation, the follow-up sways to the same delicious white-boy groove. The cream of '60s/'70s southern country is here—from Tony Joe White to Dan Penn—torn between smalltown escape and pining for home. White's "High Sheriff Of Calhoun Parish" drifts in on a haze of woodsmoke; Bobby Gentry's "Fancy" is stifling humidity personified; Townes Van Zandt gets alarmingly funky on the early "Black Widow Blues" (1966); Shirl Milete's "Big Country Blues" is a lyrical feast.

Monochrome minimalists go Technicolor, with startling results Anyone familiar with 2002's Everybody Makes Mistakes could be forgiven for thinking they'd stumbled on the wrong band here. If that album was austere—a kind of aural porcelain—then Shearwater's third is a riot of movement and colour. They remain, in parts, as sombre-still as American Music Club, but now add more than a dash of Spirit Of Eden-Talk Talk and a whole heap of '70s FM pop. Soft-rock chamber music, if you will.

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