In the overpopulated world of acoustic guitar-picking singer-songwriters, Newton Faulkner's dreadlocks are more immediately distinctive than some of his songs – not that this hampered his 2007 album, Hand Built By Robots, from hitting the number one spot and going double platinum.
However, his most recent single, Clouds, sounds like the kind of arm-wavy pop you'd find on the debut release by any one-album-then-the-contract-is-toast X Factor contender. It's positioned as track four here, after which the songs immediately revert, as if by way of apology, to the rhythmic folksy style which made Faulkner a summer festival stalwart.
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