As any maker of year end lists will tell you, you should only really allow yourself to make your best of the year list several months into the following year, not in November of the one you’re trying to describe. I’ve been trying to properly digest this album for months, and only now am I getting to some sort of understanding of how I feel about it, and that after an extended break over Christmas not listening to it at all.

Whereas the last record was a sort of enigmatic sweep across the Americana sub-genres, this is perhaps a little more straighforwardly rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s still difficult to pin down beyond the vague description of ‘Americana’. There are tints of country, rock ‘n’ roll, a little folk, a faint hint of pop… but it’s just it’s own beast, really. I don’t mean this in a challenging, genre-bending sort of a way, because it all sounds very familiar, it just has a distinct, comfortable character of its own.

That kind of approachable, unpretentious nature is all over this record, actually. The songs are all short and entirely devoid of noodling or showing off, the lyrics are personal, emotional and thoughtful without being tense or confrontational.

That welcoming nature perhaps put me off a little at the beginning though, I have to confess. Sean Scolnick sings about personal pain and his voice has a kind of sadness to it, whilst still giving off the conviction that everything really is going to be fine. I am perhaps becoming a little unused to such unworried music, so it came across as a little light on first listen, and it’s taken me a good few months to really make friends with Be Set Free, which is odd for such an inherently friendly record.

The piano escalates from a twinkle to a chime* as the mood swings upwards from wistful to joyful, giving the album a healthy emotional variation, with the call and response of Cinderella perhaps as jaunty as it gets, although Say Yes isn’t far behind. I Love You, But Goodbye, on the other hand, as well as being one of the best songs I’ve heard in ages, has an incredibly affectionate sadness to it. It’s exactly the emotion you might expect from the title, but there are few who can master that kind of mixture of warmth and melancholy with quite the deftness of Mr. Scolnick.

Langhorne Slim – I Love You, But Goodbye

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Langhorne Slim – For a Little While

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*Fuck off – sometimes cliches are just the most appropriate words to use. At least I didn’t call anything soaring or swirling.