‘Oh Mother, oh Mother, why do you make me dress up in all your old clothes and make me murder all those young and notoriously pretty girls?’
Such is the incredulous state of any would be psycho that they’re never entirely sure whether what propels them is a childlike needing of control or a flagrant dismissal of it – and it’s here that we find Colin McKintyre – his Mother’s newly acquired motel in the remote, barren wasteland of Mull and the recent loss of a father, and friend.
Whilst it’s evident that first album, ‘Loss’ was in part a reaction to the death of his father, it’s obvious that the new album deals with that actual loss. Whereas ‘Loss’ could be seen as an almost ecstatic distraction of sorts, a brisk and sunny denial of the events, ‘Us’ is a more thoughtful and consistent reading of them; a coming to terms with grief.
Family, alienation and moving on – all take up the greater part of the album; fear of control, fear of losing control, and the less than inevitable resignation of oneself to the departure of friends. But to his credit, the canny little tunesmith with the unfortunate likeness to Big Breakfast’s Johnny Vaughn depicts a masterful embrace of the pain and rejects only the less than heroic denial of it. Heavy stuff? Well no – it certainly doesn’t listen that way. Like ‘Loss’ it’s full of soaring, sun-kissed melodies and handsomely crafted arrangements. Not exactly lo-fi – but certainly homespun: think McCartney’s first solo album (the one with the weird cherry gunge on it) and something as gently bonkers and quirky as Sparklehorse’s ‘Good Morning Spider’.
With the exception of crank-up the volume set-pieces like ‘Live Like The Automatics’ and ‘Gravity’ (contractual obligations to tour plans, if ever there were any) it’s a delightful enough indulgence and nowhere near as desperate to please as the first.
Colin may be perilously close to gross infringement on some occasions (‘Am I Wrong’ recalls ‘Unchained Melody’, ‘Us’ recalls Jason Pierce’s ‘Don’t Just Do Something’), and he may have some indiscriminate, visiting alien appreciation of popular music – employing references from everyone like Badly Drawn Boy, Gilbert ‘O Sullivan, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, to Oasis, Radiohead, Spiritualized, the Rubettes, and the Pixies – but his love of music is so disarmingly simple that you could forgive him just about anything.