Postcards From Jeff release their debut album Modern Language, an elegy for cinema revealing stolen glimpses of another world, another life. Each track a cinematic snapshot, shifting and shimmering in a flickering film light, capturing the timeless claustrophobia and psychodramas of small town suburbia. A soundtrack to a world wrapped in a rich language of isolation, of disconnection and delicious melancholia, where characters reach out to connect but miscommunication with every step, staring into the darkness from the tree lined streets, out across the windswept moors and epic cloudscapes to a coming storm...

... or so says the press release. This is no cinematic experience I'd pay good money to experience. It's not that the music is awful, far from it, in places it's downright beautiful, it's just that the lead singer appears to be singing a different tune to the musicians.

Billy Bragg could just about get away with it, because his songs had a deeper message; and in some instances were pure poetry, but I have no idea why Postcards From Jeff's lead singer managed to get to the position where his voice was deemed good enough to front a band.

To be perfectly honest, if it weren't for the fact I was review this album, I would probably have switched off before the first single ended. As it was I had to endure the warbling several times as I desperately tried to think of something constructive to say... I think I've failed.

Replace the lead singer with someone who isn't tone deaf... and Postcards From Jeff may have a future. As it stands, it's not much of a treat for the ears.

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Nick Smithson