Joss Cope - Unrequited Lullabies

Guitars! Songs! Poignant English psych-pop that your milkman can whistle!

An album that's been a soundtrack to my daily commute over the last few weeks is this gem by Joss Cope released on the ever reliable Gare du Nord label. Despite being recorded in Helsinki with a group of Finnish musicians it's as English as they come, due to Cope's knack of capturing the melancholy, humdrum observation and poignant humour that forms our much lauded national psyche. I should mention at this point that Joss is the brother of Julian Cope, so the shared upbringing, genes and collection of 45s must have fed into his worldview. Anyway that's enough about that, who wants to be compared to their elder sibling. Not me, so I ain't gonna do that here!

If you wanted to pigeonhole Unrequited Lullabies with a genre, we can call it guitar-driven psychedelic pop. But really it's all about the songs which have a point, a poignancy and are some of the most melodically memorable I've had the pleasure of hearing in recent months. 'Turned Out Nice Again' captures the sadness masked by everyday small-talk. It's just one example of how, in a similar way to someone like Robyn Hitchcock, mixes kitchen-sink ordinariness with cosmic observation.

Cope also has a pleasing way with words, twisting and adapting everyday idioms and sayings, - “drowning in a sea of familiar faces”. He also comes up with succinct and pleasing couplets throughout that seem to capture something of where we are now as a species and a society. It all makes for intelligent and literate pop that even references Rudyard Kipling's If on 'Triumph or Disaster'. Don't let that fool you into thinking it's a heavy ride, it's as fun as they come and the tunes will be swirling round your head long after the disc is out the drive (other formats are available but you catch my drift!)

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