25 DAVE EVANS The Words In Between EARTH

As a huge-faced fingerstyle guitarist on Whistle Test, his flares flapping in time, Bristolian Dave Evans is alleged to have impressed his fellow guest, Lou Reed. Far-fetched as that may be, his first album for Ian A Anderson’s The Village Thing records was a heavily played, narrowly circulated work. An album of understated carpet-level observation from Evans’s Clifton milieu, its mode and scenarios feel familiar; but all the while fresh, timeless and lacking in guile.