Roddy Woomble – The Impossible Song & Other Songs

Picking up where 2006’s My Secret Is My Silence left off, Roddy Woomble’s second solo effort sees him travelling further into folky territory. Whereas his debut sounded a lot like a collection of quiet Idlewild numbers, The Impossible Song and Other Songs is a more sustained effort at doing something different, powered by the many collaborators who were playing near Woomble’s home on Mull during the album’s creation.

Packed with relaxed harmonies, there is a pleasant, uplifting prettiness about these songs: fiddles come and go, a bit of Dire Straits-esque axe work – there’s even a sax on toe-tapping single Roll Along. Hour after Hour, with its picked guitar, jaunty drums and its almost trance-like (as in the dance music) chorus has a cool, original feel.

Woomble’s lyrics, at times esoteric and difficult in Idlewild, are far more precise here. This throws up the album’s main weakness, as with clarity comes pretension and Brother Woomble occasionally preaches to the point of overkill. He may be a dedicated man of the outdoors these days, but it can be hard to take to a former New Yorker singing the joys of the “smell of the earth worn into our hands.” Most farmers I know scrub hard to get rid of it.  [PJ Meiklem]