SJD: Southern Lights

Reviewed by GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * *)

Should you be fortunate enough to be invited to the launch of this beguiling album by multi-instrumentalist and producer Sean James Donnelly, be sure to take your autograph book. Even if only half the guests on the album turn up you could walk out with the signatures of an impressive cross-section of local musicians.

They include guitarist Dan Sperber of Relaxomatic, producer Angus McNaughton, vocalists Paul (Gramsci) McLaney, Dominic (Smoothy) Blaazer, Anika Moa, Heather (Brunettes) Mansfield, Don McGlashan and Caitlin Smith, violinist Miranda Adams, trumpeter Kingsley Melhuish, jazz saxophonist Jim Langabeer ...

Yet rather than sounding like an album constructed from a contact book, these diverse, but compelling and cohesive, tracks only ever belong to SJD. His guiding intelligence allows them to edge towards Eno-like textures (on Track) or brittle but cinematic guitar rock (David Kilgour turns in the simmering, swelling centrepiece From a to b or not to be, which also samples the Clean's Point That Thing Somewhere Else).

From start to finish - from the ocean rhythms and gracefully refined melody of Rising Falling Rising to the gently quirky folk of the uncredited 12th track - this hangs together despite what might seem on paper to be so many disparate threads and ideas.

It is - and that star rating above shows I mean this in the best possible way - a very clever album. Calculated, but not calculating.

There're some old school psychedelic touches (hints of the Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows, in the coda of the opener, are always welcome), but this is also delicately orchestrated.

Superman, You're Crying is a delightful, deft ballad over sympathetic beats which complement the fragile delivery of the spare, sensitive lyrics. It has its equal in the discreetly constructed Track, with whispered voices, a lovely piano figure and a hypnotically familiar chorus. It will charm the credit card out of those who say they haven't heard a decent album since Groove Armada's Vertigo.

But these are just two gems among many in the sonically rich vein SJD is unearthing here: there are Al Green-like horns on the soul groove of The Witness; a pulse-like electronic chug beneath the airy vocals and wash of strings on State; the hushed and intimate soundscape of The Place is Surrounded which adds to the sense of mystery and tension ...

And it would be remiss not to note the astute lyrics, some with the economy of poetry, which employ subtle wordplay: "Don't know where this train will take you, this train of thought I mean", and the ambiguous "sirens" on Surrounded.

SJD has raised the bar once more as he explores the territory between electronica and singer-songwriter. But better than that, he has delivered something that will command your stereo for a long time as, onion-like, it reveals itself progressively in ever more fine layers.

Label: Round Trip Mars