Aaron Fyfe, 10 Songs (Tentman)
I know I'm a spoiled social gadfly and it ill behoves me to say so, but Aaron Fyfe needs to get out more. The new single from his debut collection is the lengthiest offering here, and the homespun wisdom of Rocking Chair casts the bearded, tattooed chap as a latter-day Val Doonican. "This might not be the best life, but it is the best you are going to have," he repeats, until you want to tell him to get a life, or shut the Fyfe up. It is not just that Aaron Fyfe is miserable, and intent on cataloguing his relationship failure in pernickety, if never revelatory, detail, but that he is so mind-numbingly domestic about it. If the whole album is inspired by the recipient of the opening line of Campfires: "I love you, but I need you like a hole in the head", then she is well out of it.
The album takes us from the kitchen chair to the kitchen floor, via the bedroom which she has deserted. We pause to note the empty cigarette packet and the television remote as well as (heaven help us) the the toilet seat. Whether the wider world needs Aaron Fyfe is the question.
Keith Bruce
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