The English singer-songwriter Mat Sweet uses an enigmatic pseudonym to craft enigmatic acoustic gems on this nine-song outing, whose deceptively spare arrangements fall somewhere between Dean Roberts and The Doctor Came At Dawn. Sweet spends much of the record singing in a breathy whisper about pitch-black rainbows, sunsets and the feeling of skin on skin but it would be a mistake to write this off simply as an exercise in melancholy singer-songwriter balladry. Some of the finest moments are the details Sweet stitches below the surface: the violin bows and industrial exhales of “Grains” and “Claimant Reclaimed,” the twinkling cymbals and computer-whirled flourishes of “Our Canon of Transposition,” the washes of sound that saturate the album-closing “Vapour Steals The Glow.”
But what really sticks with you is the unbearable tenderness of his fragile acoustic guitar melodies and the way his whisper suggests truths that run deeper than lyrics suggest. What better way to describe a record that can feel devastating with words as seemingly simple as “Rain came down to drive us in/ as bones unfold … rejoice with trembling?” – Punk Planet, May/June 2006
