Album: King Creosote

Bombshell

Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote, has the kind of voice that takes some getting used to, a wheedling Scots brogue that's intriguing in small doses – as, for instance, on his contribution to the Plague Songs project – but which edges towards exasperating the longer one is exposed to it. This may explain my preference for the earlier tracks on this follow-up to 2005's KC Rules OK, particularly the single "You've No Clue Do You", a mandolin folk-rocker whose urgent momentum is feathered with wisps of synthesiser, and "Cowardly Custard", a lazy strummer on which the mandolin is paired with melodica. The latter's pacifist apology is effectively tempered by Anderson's subsequent admission that the defence of his girlfriend's honour has cost him "a hefty clout to the jawbone for my sins". It's just one of myriad examples of his droll way with the vernacular, Anderson employing a writing style in which a wry smile always hovers around the edge of events. "You know when hands touch, and there's that electrical something or other?" he teases at one point. "There's none of that."

Download this: 'You've No Clue Do You', 'There's None of That', 'Nooks', 'Cowardly Custard'