Common Prayer – There Is a Mountain

The latest project of ex-Mercury Rev bassist and Hopewell founder Jason Sebastian Russo begins eponymously with commonprayer, an endearingly rickety shuffle knitted together with odd bits of typewriter and spare strings – kitchen sink folk at its best. If naming this song after the band is supposed to suggest any sort of manifesto, it is one you wish they wouldn’t stray so far from. Sticking close to it, Us vs. Them, Marriage Song and – in particular – Sara G have the most endorphin producing qualities, abandoning harmony in favour of a sing-along and absolutely bursting with camaraderie. Russo is, however, less successful when emulating others. Free Air is an anaemic attempt at Devendra Banhart’s Mother Earth shtick with its eyes on the moon; American sex has all the finger-picked dread of Elliott Smith though none of the vulnerability, and Hopewell stomps around like mid-nineties Flaming Lips but without the trippy payoff. [Oisín Kealy]