Steve Cradock
Album: Travel Wild - Travel Free
Label: Proper
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.stevecradock.com

No, Cradock hasn't been reborn as a latter day hobo, ready to bunk on and off HS2 to get around. The album's dressing shows he's still very much in thrall to all things sixties - clean shaven, cool shaded, short coiffed… although wearing a suit while leading a horse on the sleeve shot has echoes of Ronnie Lane's masterful seventies shambles Slim Chance.

Which also makes for a decent reference point when you get into the music. The album is packed with classy back seat gems - all thick with smoke, woozy with homebrew and ready for a cuddle. Opening act, Anyway the Wind Blows (mercifully) owes nothing to Bohemian Rhapsody and everything to Steve's missus (and co-writer) Sally whose charming vocals perfectly counter her old man's over under sideways down guitar exertions. Their kids - Sunny and Cassius - get in on the act as well, contributing flute and a poem respectively and adding to the down-home, mixed-in-the-kitchen atmosphere that permeates everything about this record.

There are a lot of acoustic sounds here creating a wonderfully warm, late summer vibe (happily, it's a wonderfully warm late summer as I write this). Doodle Book ups the tempo to a mid-pace but does drop a great big catchy chorus on us, while the Chris Difford co-write 10,000 Times is one of those great middle-aged romantic affirmations that make you feel all wise and knowing.

Andy Crofts, with whom Cradock shares a berth in Paul Weller's band, of The Moons weighs in with I Am the Sea, a tricky little number that serves to remind us these guys are far too sharp for this to ever sound like a sprawling ego trip for the momentarily time-rich rock star.

Cradock's playing is expectedly adventurous, demanding (of himself mainly) and beautifully recorded. He and Sally share the production credit and, to invoke the cliché, they seem to have made the studio an extra instrument, every bit as important as the guitars. The arrangements play to the album's strengths as well - Steve's voice is improving and although it tends to be kept back in the mix is more than up to the job required of it.

Right, now must be time for another sip.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk