The singer songwriter is a much maligned individual – and quite rightly so in the majority of cases – as they exorcise their, usually rather small, demons with little more than angst and an acoustic guitar to stop them from falling into the pit of mediocrity.
Then from amongst the dross comes a voice that stands tall and (almost) proud. I Build Collapsible Mountains (an alias for Luke Joyce formerly of Edinburgh band The Gothenburg Address) has almost shoegaze levels of downbeat intensity as song after song express the consequences of emotional damage. However, the difference between I Build Collapsible Mountains and the pretenders is the obvious intelligence of the lyrics and what I hope is black humour - “…my love is on your bathroom tiles” from “Slow Approacher”, for example. Hear it and you’ll know what is like to be a stalker. Likewise, “And The City Sleeps” describes the dubious pleasures of mutual masochism in song (mutual masochism being the technical term for a relationship in orbital decay, of course) as you begin to wonder if wearing your heart on your sleeve is actually a somewhat direct route to a prison cell.
“A Month of Lost Memories” is not an album that many will be able to take in one go. The near relentless melancholy is a potent musical weapon – and here it is most definitely a weapon in the right hands – but it is best experienced in small doses unless it has been some time since you had a proximity encounter with breasts. In such circumstances, this is the album that will bring a tear of recognition to your eye. If you “get” the entire album then you are probably looking at the world through barred windows.
Available from Bandcamp amongst other places.