After years of pursuing smarmy Brit-pop, androgynous glamrock, and wanna-be indie rock, cultured English rockers have discovered the joys of pastoral living, i.e., swooning acoustic guitars, lyrics about love and other homespun themes, and Neil Young production values. Young-uns like the Beta Band and Arnold get all freaky with the folk sound (computer loops, jungle juice, juvenile navel gazing), but old timers like Bernard Butler go for the real thing.
Butler's debut and confirmed erasure of the ghost of Suede, People Move On, showed he had a whiny but attractive voice, decent tunes, and the expected guitar chops. Friends & Lovers is more confident, filling a pop-folk gap that is easy on the ears, if not particularly groundbreaking. It's a little bit Mott the Hoople-meets-Oasis, a tad Neil Young After The Goldrush, and a smidgen of the Monkees. Bernard's still after the grand effect, songs like ΓÇ£I'd Do It AgainΓÇ¥ and the title track full of crashing chords and anthemic intentions. When Bernard goes soft, as in the countryish ΓÇ£No Easy Way OutΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£What Happened To Me,ΓÇ¥ he hits his stride, his bony choirboy voice glowing and his pliant guitars soaring with warmth. ΓÇ£Everyone I Know Is Falling ApartΓÇ¥ is darker, a lush beauty with organ and quietly brushed drums. ΓÇ£Has Your Mind Got Away?ΓÇ¥ is the album's brooding moment of weirdness, an introverted slice of Brit-rock from the reserve.
Butler's songs follow a formula of heart-on-his-sleeve sincerity balanced by big rock arrangements. While not especially catchy or lyrically stunning, Friends & Lovers is thoroughly convincing as a lost mid-ΓÇÖ70s classic. And he's jolly well professional.
Bernard Butler: All recordings written by B. Butler, courtesy of Columbia Records and Universal-Songs Of Polygram International (BMI).
