Fly Yellow Moon

Can you feel the love? If your name is Fyfe Dangerfield, the answer is a resounding ‘YES SIRREE’. The boy is positively naked in his ardour, with Fly Yellow Moon a prolonged hymn to the one he adores. Recorded quickly, this album exposes the inner workings of the songwriter: there is precious little by way of studio gimmickry here, just unadorned and eminently well-crafted songs.
Indeed, but for the bookends ‘When You Walk In The Room’ and ‘Any Direction’, you’d be hard-pushed to draw a straight line between this record and albums produced under the Guillemots’ banner. Dangerfield takes a more measured approach solo, where the default setting is aching balladry. ‘So Brand New’ sounds like the work of a one man Mamas & Papas, wistful and dreamy-headed, whilst ‘Barricades’ comes on with an emotional sincerity that recalls REM at their most beautiful and ‘Livewire’ delivers a shimmering folk atmosphere.

However, it is the penultimate track, ‘She Needs Me’ – a piano and beats shuffle on which Fyfe finds his disco groove – that really butters our parsnips. So what if he acts like some love-crazed adolescent? Fyfe giftwraps everything with such force of feeling and songwriting bravado that you can’t help but be propelled along on Fly Yellow Moon’s romantic odyssey.