Jeremy Warmsley - How We Became

There is a magical quality about Jeremy Warmsley. He can traverse that gap between ingenious and odd extremely well. His voice sometimes cracks, sometimes scrapes along yet in songs like ‘Loose My Cool’ there is an element of deliberate straining. There is a sense of shedding the awkward, slightly geeky image that ‘The Art Of Fiction’ perhaps helped elevate and ‘How We Became’ shows a more assured Warmsley - still the same degree of great lyric writing but with something intangible which has been added extra; something that could appeal to more than the twee-pop contingent.

‘Sins (I Try)’ allows Warmsley’s voice to soar over disjointed pianos whilst ‘How We Became’ juggles electronic filled background noise with a subtle organ-esque thread winding around the sublime lyrics. Warmsley’s voice again carries the meaning of the song as well as the melody and the chorus is stripped back allowing the music to speak for itself.

This is indeed an artful album, full of knowledge and painstakingly assembled samples. Warmsley, as usual, has lyrics chock full of ideas; ‘Dancing With The Enemy’ takes Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands and the relationships that formed as it’s inspiration. Despite its quite morose subject matter the song itself is full of up-tempo, upbeat piano showing perhaps a penchant for disorientating the listener. This upbeat number is followed by the paired back ‘I Keep The City Burning’ which is simplistic especially compared to the vengeful ‘If He Breaks Your Heart’ which has Warmsley singing sweetly “If he breaks your heart / I will break his legs” over disjointed samples.

There is a great degree of effort which has evidently gone into this album and there is a feeling that any mistakes which occur are deliberately put in there as. It’s an endearing album, like stepping into a colourful storybook full of different tales to pull at the heartstrings.