As a member of Electric Soft Parade and Brakes, and BFFs with British Sea Power , Thomas White is firmly rooted in the school of proper indie so beloved of Gideon Coe listening, ‘down with this sort of thing’ campaigning 30 plus men. Us basically.
Admit it; we don’t get Skins, haven’t listened to Radio 1 since Mark and Lard left, find Reading Festival too stressful nowadays and if it’s not Stewart Lee then it’s just not funny.
Thomas White is one of us. Ok, he’s only a wee bairn, lording it up in his 20s, but he’s got the pedigree, talent and, with his previous album The Maximalist, the ability to craft a rip-roaring masterpiece: The Last Blast was Rocket From The Crypt jamming with Cud, it had Synapse Galaxy’s
space funk, and the Freidman-esque Starry Night #4.
So what the hell has he done with his third album, or more appropriately demo tape, Yalla!? Well he’s gone to the desert, Dahab in South Sinai to be precise, with an acoustic guitar and a heavy heart.
Yalla! addresses the limbo at the end of a relationship, and moving to a new country… in song form! It’s his very own sixth-form poetry.
If we were at the end of a relationship we would be drinking whiskey while crying in our pants and listening to Nick Drake, as you’re meant to. Or you know, at least going to see the sights, if only to find a whiskey bar. But as I said, he’s a wee bairn, and obviously hasn’t read the Jim Morrison book of how to do the desert in style.
Instead White’s peddled out 10 tracks of maudlin acoustic strumming and damp vocals about the sea and the sky, which barely rise above passive. The Heavy Sunshine Sound pricks the ears with its breezy Teenage Fanclub melody, but the rest reeks of open mic.
The songs are, well, written. And Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls has a psychedelic feel, at least it would if it was finished and didn’t fade out just as interest was stirring.
The underlying problem with Yalla! is the lack of quality control. It needs guidance from his more than capable friends back in Brighton. Waving some twigs with British Sea Power for a while may even snap him out of his gloom.
Yalla! is a collection of rough ideas, which should either develop in to actual songs, or be left for a deluxe edition re-release to pad out some extra sales when a career’s in decline. Not as a full album when a career doesn’t yet have a peak to descend from.
3/10
by David Newbury