Stornoway - Beachcomber's Windowsill

Once you let your hipster guard down, you may (like us) find some much-needed giddy fun in the music of Oxford folk/pop quartet Stornoway, a DIY band that the BBC has declared is "steeped in dreamy whimsy and joyful beauty" adding, with a swooning sigh, "it’s hard not to be felled by the utter gorgeousness of this record." The DIY comes from the band's dizzying self-produced, self-engineered, on-the-fly recordings that make up the effervescent debut Beachcomber's Windowsill, arriving stateside August 10 via 4AD.  "If you listen closely," declares frontman Brian Briggs, "you can hear stuff like various bandmembers muttering, lots of hiss and funny little details that you would normally clean up if you were in a studio. There's something about the recordings as they are which has maybe more character and more soul to them."

Rather than being bare bones, however, Stornoway songs are (literally, it appears) a kitchen sink of instruments and fresh scrubbed arrangements. Busking guitars collide with a rash of trumpets in the album's sprinting opener "Zorbing" (a song about falling in love -- at a good clip -- video after the jump). Snares roll impatiently as slide guitars slither about on the harmonied splendor of "On the Rocks". Dense organ chords saturate the sweeping waltz "Fuel Up". And "I Saw You Blink" is a blended frappe of Merseybeat sock-hop dance moves and retro vocal strata. Only a curmudgeonly old fart could resist Stornoway's bustling musical bite (you know who you are). For the rest of us, the invitation to check our irony at the door for a few minutes of unsullied pleasure is just too great. Recommended.

Myspace   Artist Site

Stornoway - "Zorbing" (from the album Beachcomber's Windowsill)

Stornoway - "On the Rocks" (from the album Beachcomber's Windowsill)