Fly Yellow Moon

With his debut solo effort, Guillemot’s front man Fyfe Dangerfield has largely abandoned his usual eclectic and complicated stylings in favour of a back-to-basics approach, and it has certainly paid off. Written over a period of twelve months but recorded in just five days, Fly Yellow Moon is a simple but perfectly crafted piece of work. The songs on this album are sometimes beautiful, sometimes haunting, and sometimes disturbingly reminiscent of 70’s legend Burt Bacharach, and they convey both the complexity and the simplicity of being in love so naturally that it is easy to forget the skill involved in their creation; Dangerfield doesn’t just make it seem easy, he quite literally makes it sound like a (very romantic) walk in the park.

The majority of the album is an emotive contemplation on his relationship with his (now former) girlfriend, so the sincere declarations of love on the album certainly ring true. While the lyrics are not exactly pushing the boundaries of modern music, the passion in his vocals makes the repetition of, for instance, ‘I want to be near you always’ in ‘Barricades’ poignant and above all genuine. Having frequently proven himself more than capable of writing cryptic and complex pieces on love and life, this approach detracts nothing from the enthusiasm he injects into such songs as opener ‘When You Walk in the Room’, or the subtler instrumentation of ‘Livewire’.

Fly Yellow Moon is an absolute joy to listen to; euphoric, uplifting and downright lovely. It explores the longing and vulnerability inextricably linked to the first throes of love without ever seeming self-indulgent or whiny, a genuine challenge in a decidedly unromantic yet often over-romanticised world. The album does seem, at least for the moment, to have been a one-off, with Fyfe set to return to his Guillemot cohorts to record a new record sometime soon, but we can only hope that his future efforts will go even further towards perfecting the song writing abilities he has already honed to razor-sharpness here. If there is one album to listen to over the next few months, this might well be it; guaranteed to raise a smile, even if it is a British summer.