Miracle Mile: Alaska

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * )

This British pop songwriting duo's tasteful Slow Fade went right past its potential audience: those who respect the craft of Blue Nile and Crowded House, have an appreciation for Neil Halstead's Sleeping on Roads, and accept jazz bass alongside a gentle steel guitar.

Trevor Jones and Marcus Cliffe are the core of this studio band which crafts meticulous, melodic material full of sonic nuance and sensitively placed instrumentation. This is another quiet triumph.

Over lonely piano (Five Points of Light is very Blue Nile) or with keening pedal steel (where they sound more American than British), they again bring home an intimate collection of mature pop which whispers rather than shouts.

The piano ballads (on Last Drop, imagine a temperance-inspired Tom Waits) and gently caressed guitars (Seven Bells rides a previously unheard but classically simple melody) mean most will hook you on a first hearing.

Label: MeMe