Album Review

The All New Adventures Of Us – Best Loved Goodnight Tales

• 22nd Oct 2008

Held at proverbial gunpoint by a gaggle of twee dandies who demanded I listen to ‘Best Loved Goodnight Tales’, the debut record from Northampton collective The All New Adventures Of Us, I was overwhelmingly surprised.

Not only is this record pretty it’s also a grandiose voyage of smart, arguably too smart, lyrics and anthemic euphoric pop sounds. The nods towards small-town life, growing up and trying to turn love into poetry are reminiscent of American artists like Coner Oberst, only with the vocal potency of Ryan Adams. There’s much more obscure references we could make, but like the bands open-songbook style verses, most of it would just wash over heads.

Key tracks ‘Me Me Me’ and ‘St Crispin’ are arguably offering the real essence of this sonically exhilarating ride; they’re restrained and delicately sweet pop songs that escalate into shouting, drum-bashing rock anthems for indie kids sick of indie music. They’re a real challenging band as these songs have more in common with Fleetwood Mac than they do anything current, besides the usual list of bands that would undoubtedly sit beside them like Arcade Fire, Los Campesinos and Make Model. They’re a band making music that your parents, even grandparents can understand. It’s just simplistically versatile and mature songwriting that can lend to any generation, forgoing trend for quality.

The highlight here though is ‘Perfectly Imperfect’, a song so fragile that frontman Jaime can only whisper it, while you know it’s taking all his wits not to vocally lash out as he does on ‘Medicine’, and the whole band on the album’s biggest track ‘Fire Truck’. From moments of Sigur Ros like beauty to surging collisions of frantic, frenetic layers of sound this album could take you anywhere, to Narnia and headfirst into your record collection with new ears.

‘Best Loved Goodnight Tales’ is the kind of record that not everybody will get, but if you do, you’ll love it. It’s one of the most accomplished and sincere records of the year; forceful, beautiful and epic.