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Album review: The Leisure Society, Alone Aboard the Ark (Full Time Hobby)

 

Andy Gill
Friday 29 March 2013 20:00 GMT
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The Leisure Society, Alone Aboard the Ark (Full Time Hobby)
The Leisure Society, Alone Aboard the Ark (Full Time Hobby)

The Leisure Society's third album is a quintessential curate's egg, with plenty of earnest folk-rock strummage, and a few brilliant highlights distracting from several songs as weak as their punning titles, notably “Life Is a Cabriolet” and “One Man and His Fug”.

The single “Fight for Everyone” overdoes the chumminess, with chipper guitar and warm horns supporting its contention that “you just need fire and a little faith”, but elsewhere Nick Hemming's lyrical eye is more profitably applied to subjects like Sylvia Plath in “The Sober Scent of Paper”, and “A Softer Voice Takes Longer Hearing”. Best of all is “We Go Together”, a touching celebration of enduring love strongly reminiscent of the work of Pete Atkin and Clive James.

Download: We Go Together; A Softer Voice Takes Longer Hearing; The Sober Scent of Paper

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