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Records - Half Cousin

Source: The List (Issue 572)
Date: 27 March 2007 (updated 5 July 2007)
Written by: Malcolm Jack

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Half Cousin

Iodine (Gronland)

ACOUSTIC POP

For all its wild weather and curious inhabitants, you probably couldn’t help but make resplendently weird music if you grew up strumming a guitar on Orkney. Half Cousin’s 2004 album The Function Room provided some proof of that; main man Kevin Cormack might now reside in London, but there’s still an overwhelmingly odd, countrified strain to this, their second LP.

Squelchy beats and lo-fi junk-box eclecticism characterise the like of ‘Big Chief (The B&B Frequenter)’, while ‘Abide’ brings Cormack across like a kind of Orcadian Elliot Smith. It’s gorgeous little gems like ‘Home Help’ that show him at his best though: soft hearted, fleeting and glad to just be that bit different.

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