Bombay Bicycle Club - Flaws

Recording your second album is, supposedly a very difficult, stressful and drawn out process. That’s just the way that it’s meant to be. The record company expects more of the good stuff as do the fans and the pressure is enough to break some bands, well it certainly hasn’t broken Bombay Bicycle Club.

A year after their debut album I Had The Blues But I shook Them Loose the band come back with Flaws, a markedly different album which, in part, is a homage to Jack Steadman’s love of folk music which he was turned onto at a young age by his Father. Flaws is a hugely different album from the bands debut, where amplified guitars once ruled we now have gentle acoustic guitar. Where once there was a solid drum beat there is now the gentle rhythm of brushes on snare drum and the tapping of a tambarine. This is a band reinventing themselves one song at a time and they are taking us along for the ride.

Steadman’s rather nasal vocals, which seem to be at breaking point at times, invoke the image of Marcus Mumford or Pete Rowe and a lovely duet with Lucy Rose on the albums title track Flaws adds another dimension to the album.

As a whole the guitars on Flaws a picked and softly played so to add atmosphere and feeling to the songs. The exception to this is on My God where Spanish guitar is the order of the day. This changes things up a little as by the time that My God comes around you are nine tracks into the album and feel that you need something a little different to keep your interest in the album through to the final few songs.

Steadman sings about things that he knows and, as with most young males, the fairer sex feature quite highly on the list of subject matter for his songwriting. He is clearly heartbroken in Jewel and Leaving Blues and it is again left to My God to offer any hint of optimism.

As an album Flaws is well thought out, well produced and often well performed. It starts in a rather up beat frame of mind before succumbing to a little too much melancholy for my liking. Still, this certainly is a brave new direction for Bombay Bicycle Club and hopefully it’s one that they will follow up on.