(Domino)
Three stars feels a bit churlishly ungenerous to James Yorkston, a man with a vision so defined and individual that you feel compelled to take him entirely on his own terms, or not at all. His fifth album of original material – and his first for four years – rolls by like a river, all finger-picked guitars and delicate arrangements, and atop it all Yorkston’s tremulous voice, quavering through lyrics that are poetic in intent but often just too dense to parse. I Can Take All This, for example, manages to cram 600 words into three minutes: this is not a man who lives by the maxim: “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” Sometimes the phrasemaking is devastatingly simple – “I am slow at crossing borders/ But once there I try to offer unconditional love,” he sings on Two – but often it whispers by without sinking in its claws, and you think: just slow down, and speak up. But if he did, would he still be James Yorkston?
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Original Post Link http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/09/james-yorkston-cat-book-review
