Don't Forget Who You Are

Coming to prominence as 's foil in the strikingly retro , is still besotted with the past, but on his second solo album, , he's left behind Baroque or any other traces of a gentler, folkier pop. Instead, he paints entirely in bold, bright colors, happily reviving memories of Swinging London and T Rextacy, but by fusing these two glorious eras of British pop, he inevitably evokes the ghost of Brit-pop, that heady '90s phenomenon that crystallized the classic sounds of Britain. Any which way you cut it, is a throwback, so what matters is execution, and this is where excels, both in construction and production. Occasionally working with a couple of savvy collaborators -- most notably and , two writers who know a thing or two about sharp revivalism -- knows how to sculpt a song, which means he not only knows the power of a snappy melody and a catchy riff, but he understands momentum, letting the song gain power as it inevitably works its way from verse to chorus to bridge. Those songs are the skeleton of , but what initially impresses is the enthusiasm, how and company play with abandon and how the album speeds along in a carnivalesque rush. This isn't a dogged re-creation of the past, the work of an artist concerned with painting within the lines, this is an album of celebration of groovy sounds that is pretty hard to resist. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine