Cheek Mountain Thief

This album is OK. This album is not terrible. But the buck has to stop somewhere. The world simply does not need another OK, not-terrible album of geeky acoustic pop played on dinky glockenspiels, impeccably well-produced acoustic guitars and self-consciously cute toy percussion. Adding the occasional ‘found sound’ or squiggly synthesizer does not redeem things. It is surely time for the ukuleles to be confiscated from all the skinny, cardigan-wearing kids sustaining the current British slightly-folky festival boom.

Is this review being unfairly harsh on what is unquestionably a well executed slab of indie folk, 2012 model? Perhaps. This solo album from Tunng’s Mike Lindsay (inspired by the year he spent recently living in Iceland, and featuring various local residents he serendipitously met there) is more imaginative than anything by, say, Noah & the Whale or Mumford & Sons. There’s a welcome hint of Syd Barrett’s influence on tracks like ‘There’s a Line’, which also contains a satisfyingly quirky lyric in ‘ the ghost is running late again.’ But the hints of oddness only serve to remind you how good The Beta Band were. The song ‘Nothing’ contains the repeated line ‘ nothing you need here,’ which says it all really. While all concerned clearly enjoyed making this album, and you can hear that Mike Lindsay’s heart’s in the right place, every trumpet parp and every marimba plink is one parp and one plink too many.