Album: Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly, Searching for the Hows and Whys (Atlantic)

Andy Gill
Friday 22 February 2008 01:00 GMT
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For his second album, Sam Duckworth - owner of perhaps the most cumbersome pseudonym in pop - opted to leave the solipsistic safety of his bedroom laptop and guitar and call in Nitin Sawhney as producer.

The result is an expansion, rather than extension, of the Get Cape formula: Sawhney brings musical confidence to the arrangements, but Duckworth's voice and his concerns - insecurity, courage, the dangers of fundamentalism and consumerism - are much the same. And, while his opinions are largely agreeable, there's little depth; Duckworth at times slips into facile petulance ("I'm counting down the days until the earth destroys itself/ Through ignorance and gluttony and wealth"), but is mostly just baffled.

The arrangements surround his guitar and drum-machine beats with strings, mariachi trumpets and wisps of tamboura or stuttering keyboard: pleasant enough, but not daring enough to transform Get Cape's staple folk-rock into something truly startling and innovative.

Download this: 'Postcards From Catalunya', 'I Could Build You a Tower', 'Young and Lovestruck'

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