January - Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall

  by David McNamee

published: 2 / 1 / 2002

The New Acoustic Movement has a lot to answer for. Not only did people start taking it seriously, they actually started buying Alfie records. Is this what happened to Romo? You were all wearing Boots mascara and dancing to Ultravox five years ago ,you cheap sods! And if that isn’t scary then January’s reputation as new acoustic hippies and the true fact that they were the first signings to Alan McGee’s Poptones certainly is. Prepare for the New Acoustic Movement's answer to 3 Colours Red! With time-lapse revelations like ‘Through Your Skies’ on their side however, we needn’t worry. Sussed minimalist lyrics, washes of sound and a telescopic musical vision - if they are hippies, then they’re not lying in the daffodils, but a space shuttle. Frequently they sound heartbroken, but not like their life partner’s just run off with the local druid, more like they’re looking over our collective shoulders and watching the world implode into a black hole. They look too young to have been so burnt by the minutiae in life, yet January’s songs have the sort of weightlessness and lack of ego that suggests their authors could be broken by the little things. Simon McLean’s voice hovering around the syllables in ‘All Time’ like any loud noise or sudden movement is going to set the laser beams off. Even at their most sorrowful though, McLean’s writing resists descending into the morose, the wounded portraits of the ‘I Heard Myself In You’ album are shot through with a crystalline lyrical purity that’s more regenerative than anything. And it makes for some cool music. Let’s hear it for tragedy!

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