Eclectically Challenged

Charlie Simpson is incredibly lucky to have had an album to release this week. Following last week’s devastating fire at the Sony Warehouse in Enfield it has taken some very hard & quick work from those around him to ensure that he actually had some physical copies of Young Pilgrim available to replace those destroyed. The big question though is, was it all worth it? Well it would certainly seem so.

What this album does, above all else, is demonstrate just how talented a musician Simpson is, and why he is so determined to make sure that his days in Busted don’t leave him typecast for the rest of his career. This is, undoubtedly, a lot more commercial sounding than Fightstar, but never sways anywhere close to the teeny-bopper sounds that characterised his first band; it is, instead an incredibly mature, folksy sound.

I’ve already featured opener Down, Down, Down when the video was released and professed at the time just how suited his voice was to this type of music. This is particularly evident, as well, in Hold On which sees him utilise the higher tones of his voice, creating harmonies not too distant from those of fellow acoustic troubadour James Vincent McMorrow. Equally, his softer vocals fit the mellower, strings-driven Farmer And His Gun.

I think the most striking thing about the album, though, is the level of maturity in his song-writing. Whether he’s declaring that he’s ‘sick and tired of all this bullshit politics’ in I Need A Friend Tonight, or begging ‘Please just slow it down, I’m walking off these years’ in All At Once, you get the impression that these are the lyrics of someone much older than 26 years of age. It’s this, ultimately, that proves just how far he’s come as an artist in the past 10 years.

Overall, the whole album harbours a surprising delicacy which perfectly suits his trademark husky vocals, allowing him to show off a much softer side than he’s exemplified as a band member. He will face a challenge in trying to convince some of the most hardened of Fightstar fans to accept his current incarnation as a solo artist and in a market currently packed full of talented young acoustic artists he will have to shout that little bit louder to get his voice heard. It’s also undeniable that due to the chilled out nature of the album for some this will be a grower. Considering that this is his third music foray into though, I get the impression he’ll work hard to ensure it’s as successful as his previous two.