That’s a big name he’s got, possibly too big. And Crud, for a while, also misread him as ‘Heckler’, which is really quite wrong. Abrasive, obnoxious, loud, damning, embarrassing – not a single one of those adjectives apply. He’d have been better shortening that first name to its initial, much like M.Craft and M.Ward in fact – much subtler, much more fitting. And as it happens he shares more than just a common initial with those two modern folk troubadours. His sound is one of individual expression, always understated even at its most pressing, the gentle continuous introduction of seemingly unending angles on a fairly defined musical base, each one only subtly different from the last. But, importantly, different enough.
At its core is a gloriously naïve, hopeful, flower-in-the-breeze loveliness, a little sub-Teenage Fanclub perhaps, the kind of just-short-of-twee acoustic pop that Goldrush used to massage out before they got distracted running Truck, especially on the lilting ‘Your Stammering Kisses’ and sauntering to a trot alt-country ‘You Came To Me When I Was Born’. But nothing gets out of control, everything is very comfortable, like burying your head in an oversized pillow, closing your eyes and forgetting where you are.
As pillars of influence, Simon & Garfunkel, Nick Drake and the hushed Kings Of Convenience are never far out of reach, but these songs exist under an umbrella of awe which sucks in a soft haze which stick to the songs like a morning mist clings to a dewy meadow, a mirage-like glimmer, a slow motion soft focus. And it is that which is the definition. There is an easy-listening, lounge quality to them, a sort of Jose Gonzalez via Hall & Oates, only styled by Air. Its best and most blissed out moment is saved for last though; the light, spiralling ‘Grey’, crossing into a dream-like state and echoing a peaking Sigur Ros sonic weightlessness as it spins to an extended close.