Fraser Anderson

Source: The List (Issue 590)
Date: 15 November 2007
Written by: David Pollock

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Coming Up for Air (Monochrome)

FOLK

Born in Edinburgh and now based in Paris, Fraser Anderson is a hidden talent. Certainly in an era when you can’t turn round for a new, major label-signed singer-songwriter busking on every street corner, his name deserves to be up there with the front-runners.

Anderson’s voice sounds refreshingly untreated and in the raw here, and it’s bittersweet but hopeful, whether backed by just a lone acoustic guitar (‘By the Fire’), a soulful Rhodes piano-led arrangement (‘He Said to You’), or rich strings (‘Clock Watchers’). At times Anderson’s debt to Nick Drake is almost overpowering, but this is still a million miles more personal and affecting than James Blunt’s entire oeuvre.

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