Nobody’s happy nowadays. You can tell by the gently lolling heads of the people as they walk by. Or their penchant for monochromatic hues. Sometimes, however, you can tell by the naked and vulnerable tunes they mould. Take Birmingham quartet [a]Subaqwa[/a]. On their debut album, they carry melancholy in their collective pocket like an over-protected puppy.
The formula is as simple as it is quaint: dreamy rambling-pace melodies, soft and dry rhythms, balmy lo-fi guitars, almost comically twee keyboards. But it’s vocalist Justin Wiggan who takes the innocent woefulness and gives it a liberal sprinkling of angel dust: his fragile, unforced waver lying somewhere between the emotional peaks of Gruff Rhys and Fran Healy.
At every turn, you find yourself surrendering to weighty, brooding pop vignettes (‘Backwater’, ‘I’ve Seen This Before’) only to find that [a]Subaqwa[/a] have yet another trick up their sleeve as they stray into wonderfully lazy pedal-steel country ballad territory (‘Waving West’, the beatific ‘Ricetones’).
Needless to say, ‘Chalk Circle’ is a rich, often tearful and fully-rounded soundscape of pop majesty. They’ll go far – if the cliff edge doesn’t get them first.