Tom Williams And The Boat – Easy Fantastic

On ‘Easy Fantastic’, the third album from this Kent-based collective formed around titular singer-songwriter Tom Williams, the folk-rock sound through which the band have made their name isn’t particularly stretched. It is, however, a little more refined. Less ruffian troubadour, more world-weary and mature.

Sure, with Tom’s well-spoken intonation over a smattering of euphoric indie-pop sensibility there’s a tad of the Noah and the Whale about things – in fact, when paired with the gloriously warm, fuzzy guitar lines that also appear throughout, it’s often like what might happen should the Londoners take their hand at reinterpreting Ryan Adams’ ‘Gold’.

As such, there’s not a great deal of pace-changing going on, though whether slightly faster (‘Hurricane’, ‘Suzanne’) or slightly slower (‘All Day’, ‘Satellite’), Williams and his seafaring pals prove charmingly adept at mastering both. And with such gravitas that as he sighs the line “25 and still alive”, it couldn’t sound any more fitting if he were thrice that age.