Rob St John - Weald

(Song, by Toad)

Forget the much misused ‘F-word’. Rob St John is miles better than that, and putting a full electric band behind his whey-faced Lancastrian intonations has put muscle and guts on his musings.

Yet for all the low-key chorales, musical saws and string-laden back-woods baroque pulsing this full-length debut’s eight songs, it’s St John’s increasingly forceful mix of melancholy and otherworldly rapture that counts. At the record’s core is the slash and burn revelation of Domino. If the late Nick Drake and another old Nick’s Bad Seeds ever hitch up at some rural English crossroads, this is what such an unlikely clash of souls might sound like.