While the lighter touch appeals, all too often the songs themselves get blown away.
After a chance encounter involving boots, a vintage clothes shop and a light-fingered ex, James Hoare (Veronica Falls/Ultimate Painting) and TOY’s Max Oscarnold released their first full-length as
The Proper Ornaments back in 2014.
If their name - from a song by late ‘60s New York harmony-poppers The Free Design - suggested sunny-side up breezy listening, ‘
Wooden Head’ was a lot more rough-hewn, heavy on worn and fuzzily indistinct indie tropes.
Two-and-a-bit years on, ‘
Foxhole’ is an airier prospect, thanks in part to what Hoare calls a “happy accident” with a broken studio tape machine leading the band to substitute more sparse, intimate home recordings. This suits the stronger songs well. The harmony-laden ‘Back Pages 2’ is a warm, reflective stroll, even if the Byrds-via-Mark Gardner vocals and guitar arpeggios suggest more vintage kleptomania, and the hypnotic, gently pulsating ‘
Cremated (Blown Away)’ a quieter counterpart to Ultimate Painting’s Bills. Elsewhere, the melancholy Lennonisms of ‘
Memories’ and ‘
Bridge By a Tunnel’ impress.
