I hate to use the word, but ‘nice’ is the one that springs to mind when listening to this album.  It’s basic template Americana-style indie-pop with plenty of happy horns and swirling organ to lift it above the waves, and there is an all-pervading loveliness about it that makes it a pleasure to listen to.

What this won’t do is knock your socks off, shock you, surprise you or persuade you to see the world in a different way or any of those things that the more discerning music critic, and indeed listener, can tend to demand from their records.  What it will do is bring Sunday afternoon sunshine into your drab Autumn afternoons.

It’s all instruments and melody, this record.  Pianos, horns and Lawr’s sensible, nice lad vocals deliver what is a slightly soulful, more roll than rock record that splashes the staples of West Coast Americana generously across their landscape.  I can’t say it doesn’t tail off a bit towards the end – the last few songs lack a little something for me – but the first three quarters of this are really nice.  Cutely, the lyrics subvert the sunny sounds with a somewhat darker tinge which brings welcome depth to this record.

No comparisons spring to mind for some reason despite, or perhaps because, it sounds so like almost everything.  Bright Eyes, if he were more mellifluous, is a possibility.  Brendon Benson, but a little less sunny and a little more traditionally-American sounding perhaps?  I don’t know, but it’s lovely stuff whatever way you look at it.

Nathan Lawr & the Minotaurs -  Righteous Heart
Nathan Lawr & the Minotaurs -  Make Yourself

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