Moon Rambler
Album: Melancholy
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 12
Website: http://moonrambler.bandcamp.com/

I'll hold a hand up here and put a couple of caveats or three in front of the main part of this review. Moon Rambler is a French artist singing in English, the songs are essentially French, the language of delivery happens to be English. I feel that's important only because musicians in different parts of Europe take different approaches. Personally I like the soundscape Yannick Boissel, aka Moon Rambler creates. It's a sound we rarely get to hear in the media here and when we do, it tends to be delivered by pretty female singers, this sort of gives his sound a sense of obscurity, it probably doesn't get in France.

Secondly there's a lot of whistling on the album. It's not something you hear a great deal of anymore, on an occasional track, yes, but rarely through an entire collection of songs. It is something that can sound a little twee, more than a little if whistling songs aren't your cup of tea. It really adds to the sense of Frenchness in the album and I do find myself wondering how it would sound if the album had been recorded in French.

I guess that third caveat does come on language. I'm not going to second guess why Moon Rambler chose to record his debut album in English. The accent is definitely French and there's a small part of me that sort of wants to hear what the album would have sounded in that language.

I'm going to make the assumption that if you've got this far continental pop, with whistling accents is your thing and if that is the case, "Melancholy" becomes an easy album to recommend, not least because it is what it is.

The arrangements are delicate, the songs have a simplicity to them that pretty much lays the whole album bare. It's a lot lighter than the title implies, though that may be down to my conditioning on the word melancholic, which always seems very dark in its literary contexts, verging on madness rather than with a more liberal sense of unfocused restlessness, which is definitely what the album reflects.

Yes there is a sense that you are listening to a movie that features lots of short vignettes of life, but that's not a bad thing, there's nothing wrong with an album opening up doors to other people's souls.

If this is to your taste, it's an album that'll take you places, but it won't be for everyone.

Neil King