Album Review by Mark Bayross
Officially self-titled, but otherwise known as “Acoustic”, this is an eight-track mini-album of Clayhill songs re-recorded as they were played when the band were stripped down to their core three-piece at some dates on their “Small Circle” tour.
In addition to songs such as NORTHERN SOUL, MYSTERY TRAIN and GRASSCUTTER from “Small Circle” are renditions of FIGURE OF EIGHT and FACE OF THE SUN from the “Cuban Green” EP along with a couple of new songs and their cover of The Smiths PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET ME GET WHAT I WANT. Gavin Clark’s plaintive vocals do have something of a Mark Hollis-meets-David Gray quality about them, while Ali and Ted create a suitably haunting campfire atmosphere on bass and guitar respectively.
By its very nature, this is really aimed at Clayhill fans (it is only available from Amazon or i-tunes), but a lack of familiarity with the original songs won’t dampen the enjoyment of this stop-gap before their second album proper early next year.
