One Blinding Dusky Dusk

Born out of a meeting of musical minds in an East London pub, this debut album is straight from the freaked-out fringe of the new folk scene. Led by accordionist and songwriter Louisa Jones and backed up by clarinet player Ewan Bleach and double-bassist Jim Ydstie, this meandering Gypsy jazz, klezmer, bal musette sound has even been termed ‘astro-jazz.’

But for all its pan-European musical stylings, Whiskey Moonface is ultimately a platform for the hipster surrealism of Louisa Jones. It is a surrealism that leaves this reviewer cold; this is an album filled with a quirky weirdness that just feels forced. ‘You see tiny spiders, I don’t see them, but you see them’ or ‘I’ve got an octopus on my head, and it's a good thing that it's dead’: these are just a few of the lyrics I could make out. It gets weirder still; more random and more boring. Sung in a theatrical manner, with all the imagined narcotic fancy of a Romantic poet, this album may well find its fans, but not here.