Early this year David Bronson released his debut album Story, the first instalment of a deeply cathartic 22 track opus, yet chronologically the second half of his narrative. Prequel, The Long Lost is finally here and promises to draw closure to The Long Lost Story project, completing what is in effect a sonic summation of an emotional development process travelled through by each and every one of us who has loved and lost, and survived...

Maybe it's because I didn't hear the first part of this two-album project, or maybe this just isn't my sort of thing, but I found The Long Lost a bit of a chore to listen to.

It's not that it's a bad album, or that David Bronson's songwriting is particularly bad... it's just there was nothing here that made me want to recommend this... to anyone. As is usually the case, I generally spend a couple of weeks listening to a handful of albums, I have to review, for at least a week, but normally two. That way I can give them all a fair portion of my time. I always find it unfair to listen to an album once and give my view on it straight away. Some of the albums that I still dig out and listen to years after I first heard them, I wasn't a fan of the first time I listened to them.

Sadly, with The Long Lost, I just didn't feel anything. Nothing grabbed my attention for good or bad. In fact the only notes I made on it were that 'Animals' had a feel of Talking Heads about it; and that 'Incompetent Assassin' and 'Stay in Touch' were interesting. Other than that this album didn't really make much of an impression on me. It's not that it's bad; just that it offers nothing that you haven't heard a million times already.

6

Nick Smithson