Search - James Cooper :: Second Season

the debut album ?Second Season? from Australian singer-songwriter James Cooper, which in its effortless melodic lines, classic harmonies and old-style pop format has the indelible stamp of the 'old approach'. The stand out tracks - the rollicking opener ?Everything To Everyone?, the gentle, pretty, train-inspired ballad ?Beautiful As You?, and the brassy ?Save Me From Love? - over which one just imagine George Martin and a horn section salivating - display a subtle mastery of art of gradually building the listener's expectations, satisfying them, taking the levels down again only to let them ring out again in a lusty, final wash. And yet there are breaks from the formula, too: the sombre yet stirring piano ballad ?Sammy? - much more sparsely produced than the rest of the album, with sensitive guitar and cello flourishes on top of the insistent, melancholy piano chords; the thumping bass tones of ?Christine?, and the gentle lullaby ?Really Miss You?, which provides a delightful closer. Sometimes the album seems to live in the shadow of what you might call the Franz Ferdin-isation of vocals, meaning that its shinily sung lines and third part harmony accompaniment sometimes seem a bit risk-averse. It will also benefit from a more full production and better-equipped studio at some point. But that will surely come. For this moment listeners should take very seriously Cooper's exhortation to 'try falling in love in London' - his current home - because it, or something similar, is just what the residents of his adopted city may be doing as he starts to gig there more often. Would Sound Good on A Mix Tape with: Fountains of Wayne, Paul McCartney & Wings, The Thrills, The Posies, Matthew Sweet, Bobby Sutliff, the dB's