Andy's Aural Advent: 14th Dec. Bill Ryder Jones - "Two to Birkenhead"

Following on from Martin Courtney's Many Moons yesterday, here's another lovingly-crafted, late-in-the-year gem from the Domino label. Cosmic classicists The Coral have announced a tour and new album for next year (definite cause for celebration round these here parts), but one man who won't be involved is ex-guitar whizz Bill Ryder Jones. Indeed, after the delightful, piano-based A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart, some orchestral soundtrack work and a jaunt as Arctic Monkeys' tour guitarist, Ryder Jones now has a full band of his own and a new LP, West Kirby County Primary. The record contains moments of stark beauty (see the heartbreaking "Daniel") but also some of his most rockin' material to date, including "Two to Birkenhead".

While comparisons have been made to 90s US college-radio heroes like Pavement and Built To Spill, TTB's lyrics are decidedly melancholic and English ("sitting on your hands, well it kind of broke my heart, that wasn't in the plans, when we went to Conway Park") and the vocals put me favourably in mind of Coral contemporaries The Electric Soft Parade, whose 2002 debut Holes In The Wall remains, for my money, one of the great unsung British rock albums.