David J.Harvey has been making music under his own name since 2013, striking out from the Chelmsford scene. Backed up by fellow musicians Laura Kearns (vocals/guitars/piano), and Matt Wilkinson (guitar/bass), Harvey plays a relaxed, chilled out acoustic style of alternative pop-rock that calls to mind early noughties artists like Damien Rice and James Blunt on his debut album Cinderella. Luckily, Harvey largely avoids the vacuity of the latter artist, and strikes out for a meaningful, reflective release that helps shine due to the variety of musical styles and quality mix, provided by Chris McCormack (3 Colours Red).
Cinderella kicks off with Turn My Love Around. Atmospheric and acoustic, it is driven by a very groovy style of syncopated electric drums, heavily reliant on reverb, and developing into a big expansive sound. The drums on this track are particularly ace, having a laid back but still energetic and driving beat; in fact, all of the drums on this album (entirely sequenced) are on top form, and they work just as well at orchestrating the songs as the orchestral instruments do. On Fly, Harvey's falsetto voice complements his lyrics of escape, lifting and lilting with the listener and strings, building to a crescendo. With its electric guitar licks, tender acoustic guitars and strings building across the course of the track, it's very reminiscent of The Verve's Lucky Man, coming across as a chill B-side to a track from Urban Hymns - which I'm totally fine with, as its one of my favourite British albums from the turn of the century. It builds a lot like the aforementioned Lucky Man, with the bare-bones acoustic guitar holding the track down, the strings soaring to an epic bridge where tasteful, soulful melodic licks come into play, before culminating into a Santana-lite style solo. On Stormy Air, the dynamics swap around, as the piano grounds the song here whilst the guitar complements the tinkling on the ivories. Again, the tasteful electric guitar licks - occasionally meandering here, but largely appreciated - serve to give the track a bit of dynamic edge. But this is a very different song to the last two, being driven largely by the more orchestral instruments, and helps fit the lyrics. However, it also goes on for five minutes and doesn't do much to deserve that extended running time, which is frustratingly a running theme for most of the songs on this album. Whilst their long running time is probably due to their low tempo, the songs that have less compositional focus do tend to drag on; although a lot of Harvey's songs do build towards crescendos, they could still definitely do with a bit more trimming.
Airwaves carries the lyrical themes of Stormy Air, and is a stand-out track on this album. Lyrically listening to the airwaves to try and ground yourself in a sense of locale, its sampled backing beats, syncopated drumming and eerie, electronic atmosphere brings to mind 90s electronic group Air, who mixed acoustic guitars and electronic instrumentation to create their masterpiece Moon Safari. Musically, More Than This carries on this theme but feels a bit more organic in its execution; here, the focus is on the acoustic guitar that grounds the song, paving the way for the electric guitar to come crashing in at the end. The title track, Cinderella, calls back to the opening tracks in its musical style, with the refrain of "I can see you fall, so you can watch me burn" building to a climax where orchestral strings and electric guitars come together. It's cool that Harvey and his band are thinking about how they can emphasise different aspects of their musical influences, and on tracks like Supercharged, an angsty, electric guitar driven but downbeat and downtempo ballad, they're able to demonstrate their flexible musicianship. Like other tracks on the album, Supercharged may meander a little bit towards the end, but it feels very organic in the soft-rock jam that it evolves into. These four tracks really show the variety of styles Harvey and his backing band are capable of, and really shows off McCormack's excellent production skills. All these songs have multiple layers of instrumentation, and instead of having one instrument fighting for space at the expense of others, there is room for all voices to be heard without cluttering the overall track.
Unfortunately, I Got You High, the longest track on the album, comes after this solid run of tracks, and really doesn't offer that much. It's almost six minutes long, and doesn't really know what it wants to be. There's a lot of shoegaze style reverb and delay at play here, but I feel like the song that Harvey is trying to craft - both musically and lyrically - stray far from what he's previously been dealing with lyrically. The opening verses feel a little bit clunky lyrically, and I just don't feel as invested or immediately drawn in as I do on other songs. Musically, it doesn't develop as well as the other tracks on the album, with the orchestration here coming a little too late, the drums stop-starting and the track not really knowing how to keep itself from feeling dynamic. I Got You High is unfortunately a bloated misstep after such a solid run of tracks; in comparison to the next track Feel, which seems to nail the atmosphere that I Got You High was aiming for with its laid back, washed out chiming guitar lines and calm but consistent drumming, it only serves to drag out the album. Closer A Little Bit High isn't the best song on the album, but it is probably the best showcase of Harvey's impressive vocal falsetto talents. It's not a strong closer, but that's because it's not trying to be; it's airy and expansive, yet still introspective. The marching drums that come in at the end of the track serve as the album's punctuation point and help ground this song a little bit, but I do think the end of this album represents my main gripe with it as a whole; Cinderella begins to drag her feet just a little, and starts losing focus.
The kind of modern pop music touted by musicians like James Bay and Ed Sheeran has a certain vibe to it - lo-fi, compressed guitars and pianos, one instrument emerging to dominate the others at the expanse of the backing tracks. Comparatively, Harvey and his band have crafted an album that hearkens back to the early noughties alternative pop and singer songwriter craze, whilst incorporating a range of influences from this era and the late nineties to bolster their sound, and it's really refreshing to hear in comparison. These tracks More than that, their willingness to experiment is their greatest strength, creating a really solid run of songs in the middle of the album. However, the album is definitely a few songs too long, and a few of these tracks sap the listener's enthusiasm with their extended running time. Harvey is definitely capable of writing more concise songs that don't need as much time to communicate their ideas; but for now, this is a solid first album and a good sign of things to come.
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