Album: Joshua James, Build Me This (Intelligent Noise)

A young American trailing his fingers in the plankton-rich surface waters of old American music; an album themed, almost biblically, around the mystique of the US landscape and history.

It is composed of songs and it is melodic, thoughtful, passionate and highly textured. But for reasons that are elusive, it feels more like an exercise in sound art than a new chapter in the old story. Although it is both loud and quiet, it neither rocks nor swings. It is quite pretty, though.