Hey, you like Nick Drake, right? I know you do. Just about everyone does these days it seems. Maybe you even liked him before it was cool-- back before his songs weren't advertising for Volkswagen. At any rate, if you're into the sad Englishman, you'll probably want to check out this James Hindle album.

First, let's give the guy some credit here. James Hindle doesn't really sound like Nick Drake-- his voice is deeper, his diction is better, and his arrangements are a little less exploratory-- but he comes from the same English folk tradition that gave rise to Drake and scores of his contemporaries. Born in Yorkshire, he made the move to London like a lot of great musicians eventually do, packing an acoustic guitar and a set of expertly penned tunes to show off around town.

To record his debut album, though, he made the trek from the foggy streets of London to the foggy hills of San Francisco, and it shows a little. The sound here falls somewhere between that of Hindle's countrymen and Bay Area locals the Red House Painters. There's an even more formal connection between the two than sound, though. Producer and Badman founder Dylan Magierek is also responsible for the sound on head House Painter Mark Kozelek's two recent solo albums, and the atmosphere on James William Hindle is similarly dry and unaffected.

Hindle opens his debut with the steadily waltzing "Down and Able," accompanying his midrange tenor with big, slowly strummed chords and loping arpeggios. Former American Music Club skinsman Tim Mooney provides a stately pulse as Hindle transfers his heart from his ribs to his sleeve with lines like, "Four weeks seems endless when you're stuck in the first one/ And it's four in the morning/ It feels like the light will never come/ And I feel disastrous with all of my follies/ The usual misgivings and dangers."

"Remember My Markings" adds a thoughtfully scored string quartet to the same basic formula, except this time, there's an even better melody for them to interact with. The swelling cello and violin countermelodies trade off nicely with Hindle's vocal, culminating in one of the record's high points when Hindle is joined by former Tarnation vocalist Paula Frazer on the song's jaw-dropping bridge.

Hindle's voice and the strings are all you get on "(Masks)," which gives the song a rather stunning sense of loneliness. It's followed by what may be Hindle's best original, "The List of You and Me." The tempo is up a few notches as he declares, "These are the days of our imperfection and this is where I feel at home," in the chorus over Dirty Three-inspired electric guitar-grind and layers of vigorously bowed violins. Nearly as good is the song that follows-- "Brooklyn Song" is a spare track featuring Hindle and his guitar backed only by a thick, brooding cello line. It wouldn't be too out of place on Five Leaves Left, if you had to know the truth.

Alongside all the originals are two inspired covers: a sufficiently twangy take on Glen Campbell's "Less of Me," which closes out the set, and the true stunner, a remarkably personal version of the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke." Hindle does for the brothers Gibb here what Mark Kozelek has done for AC/DC time and again, stripping away the pretense and posturing of the original and laying the lyrics and basic melody bare. The result is a deeply sad, but not depressing, moment of quiet reflection.

If there's a criticism to level at James Hindle at this point, it's that he needs to work a little on developing his vocal delivery and expanding the range of his material slightly. A few more songs would also be nice, as the album clocks in a little short at thirty-five minutes and eight tracks. Still, for a nascent artist, Hindle's craft is quite well-formed and it seems as though he can only go up from here. With any luck at all, he's destined to release some great records in the future. Who knows? Maybe twenty years from now, your kids will find out about him from some Volkswagen ad. Here's hoping the future will be a bit kinder.

-Joe Tangari, December 14th, 2001