The Rosie Taylor Project - This City Draws Maps

To review this album seems to be doing it a disservice. To be doing so suggests that there is, in some way, a reason to be critical about a release. Yet this debut by The Rosie Taylor Project is simply a stunning piece of work. Melancholic, delicate, beautiful - the list of superlatives could stretch on but it would be entirely superfluous. And that would be the polar opposite of this record - every note seems perfectly balanced, every track perfectly formed. This Leeds six-piece cite Rilo Kiley and Bright Eyes as influences, and it is easy to see why, but they easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with such luminaries.

Each track flows on perfectly from the next, submerging the reader in what spending a British summer’s day amongst friends in a cornfield would feel like if there wasn’t always the chance of showers. The brass that weaves in and out of this mini-album - its half-hour length the only criticism that can possibly be drawn, and only because the eight tracks leave you so utterly flabbergasted as to want more - is the sunlight that pierces the odd wisp of cumulus, banishing it for a day that seems far in the distance, even if just for today.

Picking a standout track here is therefore an immensely difficult task, but aside from the uplifting splendour of single ‘Black And White Films’, it is the bouncing ‘London Pleasures’ that soars, a Guillemots-gone-folk number that should soundtrack the summer of every man, woman and child in this country and beyond. Even when things take a more downbeat turn on ‘A Few Words of Farewell’, there is always the feeling that the good times are just about to roll again. ‘This City Draws Maps’ is an essential record: one that all must own, both for those days when the sun is beating down, and to rekindle the flame of the spirit on those when a blanket and a mug of hot chocolate is the only viable option.