To these ears, Mardie comes across as something of a Moby for 2009, mixing and matching several styles and samples at once. There’s a touch of Beck in there also, but where Beck sacrifices meaning and emotion for art, Mardie tells us straight how he’s feeling. There are more ideas in a single song here than there are in many albums these days. It makes for truly delicious listening. The overall mood is very romantic and wistful, making you wonder how many times this man’s heart has been broken and, like Bon Iver before him, what he went through to make such beautiful music. Mardie’s voice also has a very Smokey Robinson-esque quality which immediately endears him all the more to these ears. One gets the impression that he has lived these songs as much as he has sung them. The undercurrent beneath all the songs here is (or are) the sweeping synth passages present in every song. Always similar but never the same, they give the album a gelling point and unity that means, no matter what you musical tastes are, you are sure to find something to like.
