Album Preview: Homespun, Short Stories From East Yorkshire

Label: Homespun

Homespun is the collective put together by Dave Rotheray to record songs written by him since The Beautiful South split.

It’s no surprise, then, to find a similarly downbeat assemblage of real-life tableaux and wry observations in songs like “Short Story”, albeit sung here by Sam Brown rather than Paul Heaton.

Rotheray’s songwriting skills are perhaps best displayed on “First People On Earth”, in which the Edenic fantasy is rudely shattered by reminders of mortgages and tax returns.

Elsewhere, Mary Coughlan fronts “The Driver”, a piano lament for a life spent on the road, while the same theme of regret recurs in “Happiness Passes”, in which flute and bongos replace the pedal steel-streaked country arrangements applied to most of the album.

For a sample track from Short Stories From East Yorkshire just click on the link below:

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