Young, eager and with the kind of sweeping, handsome fringe that would give Vernon Kay a run for his money, singer-songwriter Greg Holden wraps his frothy, Lancastrian tonsils around a collection of tunes that furrow a comfortable plot within that Damien Rice/Teitur Lassen field of fragile troubadours travelling light and turning out their pockets along the avenues and alleyways of life’s unforgiving (and poorly lit) neighbourhoods. It’s a self-released affair, buoyed-up by his success on Youtube and with a scruffy, and gently tousled talent honed on the now obligatory word-of-mouth social networking circuit. So what you have here are odds and ends taken from the last three years he’s spent rehearsing in his bedroom and uploading his wares on MySpace – and whilst nothing really stands out and screams ‘hit’, there’s enough in the way of skittish youthful charm (‘The Art of Falling’, ‘Choking On Concrete’) to place him cautiously in the shadow of master emoters like Jeff Buckley and Ray Lamontagne.
As a ‘brother can you spare a dime’, rags to further rags story goes it’s not bad. As gauche as The Kooks and as comfy as Luke Pritchard’s sofa.