Album: Lucky Jim, ***

This engaging slice of British Americana – if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms – was made by Gordon Grahame and Ben Townsend within months of their first meeting in Brighton, an indication of how naturally their talents have meshed here. It's basically an album of Grahame's love songs, embroidered with arrangements that set his acoustic guitar against Townsend's piano counterpoints and string washes – a series of Dylan-esque warbles of devotion that nod to all manner of singer-songwriter legends but teeter over into exaggerated mannerism on only the title track. With its plangent croon and feverish beat, "Leah" recalls Van Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do", while pizzicato strings and Mediterranean guitar lend an intimate, Leonard Cohen mood to "The Honeymooners", an erotic duet between Grahame and Heather Banks, in which the latter urges, "Come and rest between my thighs/ The hungry days of reason, they have fed you full of lies." Throughout, Grahame displays a neat, original turn of phrase – "Been out on the road with a craving for tar" – and the ability to turn clichés on their head, as in: "One and one is one, not two." But there are discrepancies in some of the arrangements: the sloppily strummed guitar of "Leah" works against the neat, light Brubeck beat; on "Lesbia", the prissy piano sounds out of place. Both tracks would be improved by sparer settings that played to the songs' strengths – as on the lovely "Westwards We're Headed", in which two Spanish guitars and a basic drum machine conjure up the spirit of "Spanish Harlem".