The 2kDozen 500: #296 - James Yorkston, "I Was A Cat From A Book"

So, still in an emotional folky mode with Fifer James, although there isn't the same Millenial fear of the end of days. It's on a much more domestic scale, but then that is where most people's dramas come about - at the kitchen table, under the duvets, in the bathroom mirror. It's the Fence Collective again and the power is there in his voice and in the slow-moving chamber strings and the lyrics about "crooked laughs" and lines like "Sometimes the act of giving love can fool you into believing that you're receiving love".

Kathryn Williams offers some counterpoint on a couple of tunes, including the very prosaically titled "Kath with Rhodes". Soft, cracking vocals up very, very close. "The Fire & the Flames" is very close by. And not an especially happy piece of music - uplifting and gorgeous, yes; happy, no. "Two" is about two birds with claws and songs and is about him and someone else. "I Can Take This All" is a bit too uptempo for my immediate liking - despite lines that "Remember I have a tender side/That can't be fucked around". It reminds me of that music from Omaha, Nebraska that was all the rage ten or years ago.

It can't be any coincidence that so much of his and Fence Collective video work features the seaside. It is the sound of a wild seaside, of circling seagulls and staring out with grey eyes over grey waves and thinking about the bits of life that people save for occasions like that.

Rating: Slow-Moving Power out of Kitchen Window