Findlay Brown - Losing The Will To Survive (Peacefrog)
UK release date: 28 May 2007
Walking through Covent Garden the other day, I found myself humming a tune. Nothing odd about that, I hum (much to my workmates' annoyance) almost all the time I'm not listening to music played by other people. Then I realised with a jolt that after only three listenings I was humming Findlay Brown's Losing The Will To Survive, a gentle but upbeat track that draws on West Coast folk rock as well as the British folk tradition much in evidence on the rest of the album from which it's taken, Separated By The Sea.
This is pure summer sunshine music, perfect for festivals, the sort of music you soak up lying back, but it also has enough bounce to put a spring in your step as you walk. Brown's vocal is very soft and not particularly mannered, but it remains quite distinct... very pleasing to the ear but not at all soporific.
The B-side is a curiosity, an acoustic rendering of The Jesus & Mary Chain's Just Like Honey. I have always thought the wordplay in that song quite beautiful, the creative flowering of the Mary Chain's devotion to The Velvet Underground. The softened vocal, even rhythm and acoustic instrumentation do bring out the beauty of its tune, but entirely miss the sick and twisted air of the original. And taking away the echoing Venus In Furs-style chords and booming drum for me removes most of what made the original so special.
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