Well this is rather good. Not uniformly brilliant perhaps, but not an awfully long way off. It starts a little slowly, not because the songs themselves aren’t good, more because they are all of a similar, slightly dreamy sort of pace. I’d have been tempted to stick something a little more uptempo or dramatic in there somewhere.  By the time Crook of My Good Arm turns up I find myself somewhat grateful for the increase in urgency.

For the most part, although Crook of My Good Arm is brilliant, it is the exception rather than the rule on this album.  It’s raucous and a little clattersome and really not quite what the rest of the album is about.  For the most part Black Forest seems to owe something of a debt to Elvis Costello & the Brodsky Quartet’s Juliet Letters, albeit without the pretentious bombast.

Combine that sort of aesthetic with a gorgeous, gentle pop sensibility and just a little wistful sadness and you have the ingredients for Black Forest.  Add just a tiny little bit of drama, that always treads the right side of ambitious to remain down to earth, and you have twelve songs of unmitigated loveliness.  I wasn’t expecting this album, it appeared from nowhere in something of a musical barren patch, and I love it.

In fact, just to reiterate that last point, I’ve rarely known a band manage to weave so many slightly preposterous, theatrical elements into their music without sounding just a little bit arch and pretentious.  That this is absolutely not the case here is one of the reasons, above and beyond a love of the music, that this album feels genuinely special.

Pale Young Gentlemen – Kettle Drum (I Left a Note)
Pale Young Gentlemen – We Will Meet

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