Album: Jim Moray

Sweet England, Niblick Is a Giraffe

Irritatingly young, handsome and talented, Jim Moray is the poster boy of what will probably become known as "nu folk", transforming traditional folk songs with subtle, contemporary arrangements that draw on both his classical training and his broad-based pop interests, and which make use of his formidable multi-instrumental abilities. He describes the pieces on Sweet England as "just folk music from the point of view of someone that has heard hip hop and The Smiths and Ligeti and Joseph Taylor and Radiohead and S Club, and doesn't differentiate past whether it's good or not", which seems a good way to go about making any kind of music, really. Accordingly, he employs a diverse range of approaches: the fingerstyle electric-guitar of "Gypsies" is embellished with Sketches of Spain trumpet shadings; urgent programmed rhythms underscore "Early One Morning/ Young Collins" and "Lord Bateman"; the courtly love ballad "Seeds of Love" is swathed in silken sheets of strings and a subdued chatter of electronic bleeps; and bleak electric guitar and keening E-Bow guitar whine provide a suitable setting for the supernatural love story "The Suffolk Miracle". When he settles for an a capella vocal treatment, as on "The Week Before Easter", the multi-layered arrangement merits comparison with Brian Wilson at his most complex. It's all sensitively arranged and beautifully played, and there's a yearning quality to Moray's tenor that suits the material; but I'm not entirely sure of the value of this kind of "gentrified" folk music, the sophistication of whose arrangements tends to pull these songs away from their rough-hewn, working-class roots.