Reviews

Artist: Stornoway
Album:The Early Adventures Of Stornoway
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 5
Rating: ****
Contact:  www.myspace.com/stornoway

There's a proper sense of being in a band when you're stuck away rehearsing in a garage. It takes music to back to it's roots and from the roots grows bigger things. Stornoway started life in a garage in Oxford and none of the band have actually been to Stornoway.
Leaving this quirk of band naming convention aside, it's time to pay attention to the band's debut release, "The Early Adventures Of Stornoway", allegedly recorded in a coal shed, ahh such humble beginnings, but then this is a band that might just need to keep it's feet on the ground.
The first thing you sense is the strength of the writing and arranging. There's some very sophisticated thought processes gone into a sound that comes across as being very simple. Starting with the opening track, "I Saw You Blink", a song about relationships, you realise the band is more than capable of letting a voice go off on it's own only to combine back into the harmonies seemlessly. This is woven around guitar, bass, drum and keyboard.
There's something of the early Squeeze in the way the numbers are performed, particularly the second track, "Mysteries Are Good For You", which includes the line "The spiders web is strong when you consider what it weighs". It's folkier than Squeeze was but the way te song is constucted reminded me of both Glenn Tilbrook and Ian Dury.
The four piece have all had experience of other bands and are starting to gig around the Oxford area quite regularly. Hopefully it won't be long before they start getting further afield, because they do have that certain something about them.
There is a real derth of acoustic driven, sophisticated folk pop around. Stornoway have the potential to plug a very big hole. So long as they keep their feet on the ground and continue to write to this standard, with the right break, they could go far. There's never a dull moment in their songs, though it has to be said, it is only over 5 cuts. They switch tempo easily and you feel they could adapt to almost any surroundings. Stornoway deliver fantastic songs that deserve a wider audience.