The People The Poet
A Short Obsession With Time
Effortlessly swatting off any potential ‘one-trick pony’ accusations, South Wales’s criminally underrated The People The Poet follow up 2013’s The Narrator with another sparkling clutch of emotional vignettes honed and crafted far beyond your standard fare. That that album came in deluxe packaging and this one comes via a Soundcloud link tells a sorry story regarding the nature of merit, but so it goes.
With the new album marrying the poignant heft of Springsteen to an Elbow sentimentality, all weaponised by a restraint U2 have long-since misplaced, it’s genuinely perplexing why the band are club-locked rather than arena-bound. Anthemic on the right side of bombast, bolstered by an A-grade songwriting nous, the metaphorical cherry is Leon Stanford’s gritty, Vedder-esque voice, infusing explorations into the human condition with authority and pathos.
Whether the passage of time will bring the rewards this album deserves remains to be seen, but regardless, this is eminently superior stuff.
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tim Batcup