.James William Hindle

What, you didn’t know that British folk is suddenly hip this year? It’s true. All those Richard Thompson jokes made by smarmy young music critics have come back to bite them all in the arse like a pair of twenty-sided dice with rotting, crooked teeth. And now that Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus has began ripping off Mellow Candle guitar leads and dropping names like Vashti Bunyan, it only makes sense that James William Hindle could make a subtly stylish and exquisite-sounding album like Prospect Park in the 2003. Not that he’s singing about faeries and mice and shit, but with a backing band that comprises members of Ladybug Transistor and Essex Green, Hindle’s sophomoric long-player is made up of the kind of amorous songs that will sit well between Nick Drake musings and Sandy Denny outtakes on that mix tape you’ve been making to impress the cute girl at the record store who told you she likes Fairport Convention. Hindle gets extra points for actually being English and for rocking a pointy beard on the gatefold picture of this fine recording.