Return to
previous page

Welcome return by London-based singer-songwriter

Four years on from his lauded debut, Daniel Rachel remains a reassuringly contrary soul. His compositions range all over the lap, The Bucket and Broom Song's Dylanesque protest blues suggesting 2006 is the new 1969 (complete with references to Mohammed Ali's draft resistance and the making of Abbey Road)while Driving 'Round the Bend is all quirky observation and gawky eccentricity. He sometimes tries to hard to shoehorn a surfeit of detail into songs - An Englishman Abroad veers between Libertines-like Albion mythmaking and one of Mike Skinner's greasy spoon lists - but his something-for-everyone approach works. Being independent is the only part of Rachel's set up that is fashionable now, and that is perhaps more by accident than design. But there is power here, no little insight, and some very fine songs, too

Angus Batey
MOJO