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You can download this for free, so there's no need to be coy. Especially when the music is so emotionally piercing, so lovely sounding. From Derry, via Glasgow and your broadband tubes, it's the very thing for those indifferent August blues.

Conor Mason tends to whisper when others holler, but he voices it well. His songs crack open like fortune cookies, full of wise little comments, ideas to gather and consider. "It's not what it seems, how it should be," he murmurs on 'Lucky' as we wait for the outcome, willing the guy to get a decent roll of the dice.

The tunes are full of sweet patterns, reminders of Paul McCartney circa 'A Hard Day's Night' or maybe Elliott Smith, playing it woefully true on 'Either/Or'. Hence the fluttering chorus of 'Better Than Nothing' and the scraps of compensation in the lyric. It's not exactly how Conor wanted it to be, but hey, we suspected that earlier.

The harmonica tootles in a forlorn way, the backing vocals make with sympathetic "whoahs" and a piano figure wibbles in the background. The lyrics allude to self-destruction and we hope that Conor isn't unusually fixated by the kind of lifestyle that Ma Cobain called "that stupid club". Because this music deserves to endure, truly.



Stuart Bailie