If the name Bored Nothing didn’t conjure up enough delusions of ennui, then how about Some Songs as a lazy album title and a portrait doodle for the album cover? And then there’s lead single Ice-Cream Dreams. I’m not sure I’ve had an ice-cream dream, but it sounds like it would be like a less intense cheese dream, with the song’s casual double-tap of a drumstick leading the chorus’ mundane lyric ‘Everything’s exactly how it seems’. So much about Fergus Miller seems off-the-cuff, disinterested and alienated. And yet his recordings show an attention to detail and a consistent ear for great melodies, so he must care, even if it’s just a little bit.
Some Songs is not a huge leap from Bored Nothing’s excellent debut or last year’s more varied Another EP, but it’s a confident consolidation of Miller’s sound. All of the ’90s influences meld together and are intuitively integrated into an unfussy whole. Opener Not heralds a subdued start to the album that slowly builds to the more uptempo Do What You Want Always, a more positive spin on the previous album’s highlight Build a Bridge (And How about You Get the Fuck over it). The album’s consistency carries though all the way to the short/sweet Artificial Flower and the blissful release of Ultra-Lites II. Some Songs is clearly another winner.
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
Best Track: Song for Jedder
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: New Moon ELLIOT SMITH, Something About Airplanes DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, Skelliconnection CHAD VANGAALEN
In A Word: Bliss
