Music Review

02 December 2008 02:46 BST

Tom Baxter: Skybound

Sylvan Records, out January 7th.

In a nutshell…

Superior singer-songwriter stuff

What's it all about?

Highpoints on a generally rather wonderful album include title track Skybound, Baxter's gorgeously fragile musical autobiography delicately counterpoised between regretful minor chords and a soaring, optimistic, piano-led chorus.

Miracle sounds like a sure-fire single, with swelling strings and a powerful crescendo lending emotional weight to lines about two people falling in love like two satellites slowly spinning into orbit around one another in some warmer corner of outer space.

And on Half a Man, Baxter sounds suspiciously like he could be channelling the ghost of Jeff Buckley. What higher recommendation could you need?

Who's it by?

Tom Baxter released debut Feather and Stone to critical acclaim in October 2004, but split with his label Sony three years later. Undeterred, Baxter recorded second album, Skybound, independently and proved his own self-confidence to be well founded. Within four days of the album's initial launch through iTunes on June 4th 2006, it had climbed to the top of the download chart.

So with Skybound already a proven success, you might wonder why the release of this CD version is worth making a fuss about. However, Baxter originally launched Skybound with a Kensington art exhibition designed to showcase his sound visually through ten original canvases, thereby making the artwork that accompanies the CD nothing less than an expansion of the music itself.

As an example...

"Close your eyes, we're drifting into space again/We're satellites and our dreams are made of this." - Miracle

"Aware that with every heart of gold/there retains its currency/So if you believe love's cause is free/you can call me a fool to call it robbery."- Half a Man

Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys

A nomination for Best Contemporary Folk album wouldn't be impossible.

What the others say

"A record full of love, vulnerability and musical dexterity."
- Female First

So is it any good?

While Baxter's debut, Feather and Stone won praise from the critics, it never quite managed to penetrate the consciousness of the mainstream in the way that it deserved. But with its success on iTunes, Skybound already seems to be well on the way to correcting that wrong. And with so much to be loved and admired on this album that can only be a good thing.

An introspective journey into the soul of an everyman, in its music, words and artwork, Skybound explores both fears and the unequalled joy that accompany the sensation of falling in love again after your heart has already been broken.

Something to fall in love with here, then.

8/10

Alex Coke-Woods