Born to a studio veteran father and a mother who was rather fond of poetry, the Nashville bred Landon Pigg brings his own particular fondness for gently lyrical pop in the mould of Ed Harcourt, Rufus Wainwright and David Mead to an album of pleasant yet largely uninspiring hooks, homages and hopelessly eager choruses. Although Pigg also credits Led Zeppelin and the Beatles amongst his influences, it’s really his affection for the spine tingling, emotional rancour of Radiohead that defines this lacklustre debut. ‘Last Stop’ starts with a lightly psychedelic guitar, a jazzy groove and the trademark slur and whisper of one indelible Thom Yorke before screwballing into a controlled frenzy of distortion, screams and poignant descending chord progressions – and all hewn within the context of self-loathing, exhaustion and self-destruction. Sounds like ‘Killer Cars’? Well it does, but it’s the closest Landon actually gets to spilling his guts, this self-titled album often failing to lift itself beyond the safe (if consummate) production values, the reckless chirpiness and uninspired busking of tracks like ‘Trickery’ and ‘Eggshells’.
It’s not without promise, far from it, but if I happened to have £15.00 burning a hole in my pocket, I’m likely to get more pleasure from the seeing the smoke than I am dousing it with this.