Ken Stringfellow: Soft Commands

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * )

He was, with Jon Auer, at the core of the great but overlooked 1990s United States power-pop band the Posies.

The duo played a hilarious and increasingly drunken set at the Kings Arms a few years back which rambled from Posies songs through bent covers, lyrical improvs and gentle swipes at R.E.M., with whom Stringfellow had been playing on tour. (He's on R.E.M.'s Reveal.)

Pop music is in Ken's veins and this consistently surprising, unpredictable and lyrically abstruse outing has touchstones in pop's great spectrum. There are suggestions of early solo McCartney in his vocal delivery (You Become the Dawn), Elton balladry, and the glorious uplifting melody and backing choral of When U Find Someone is the great lost Macca/Beach Boys pairing.

But there is also a disorientating darkness in these sunny-sounding songs. The dub track isn't much cop and the covers (the Association's Never My Love and Neil Young's Down to the Wire whipped into a hurricane) don't add much.

But if Matthew Sweet (very bittersweet), recent Josh Rouse, or McCartney's Ram mean anything to you - or the very great Posies - then you will happily answer these soft commands.

Label: Ryko