Noam Weinstein
Album: Clocked
Label: No Songs
Tracks: 12
Website: www.enoam.com

The some-time Norah Jones collaborator is back in harness with regular sidekick Mike Viola for this album of literate wake up calls and artistic slaps about the head. Fans of Ben Folds, Jonathan Richman, M Ward and Jim Noir will find elements that are familiar to them and while it's hard to deny the influence of Elvis Costello and even Randy Newman, Weinstein doesn't sound much like either. He does, however, have a way with words and could be the comfortable middle class tuneful ying to Daniel Johnston's deep dark truthful yang howl.

There is folk music in here, but only in the sense that it is music of the people - well, some people anyway. Show tunes, amped up Billy Joel-style singer songwriter 70s pop, musicals, marching bands and even a kind of Gothic klezmer all lend their styling to Weinstein's defiantly eclectic sonic stew. His lyrics veer from confessional to triumphant, disturbingly sad to unremittingly joyous, painfully descriptive to frank and proscriptive… Clocked is an album that will be missed by the browsers on the Main Street, it is your duty to point them down the right alleyway.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk