THE CITY SLEEPS

This is a strange one for me. I had previously heard Touchstones' Wintercoast album over a year ago and had not been particularly enamoured by it. I listened to it a couple of times and then quietly put it to one side. It wasn't that Wintercoast was a bad album. It just didn't do much for me.

When 'The City Sleeps' came out very recently I was quite taken by the cover art and decided to listen to a couple of tracks off of the new album. I think the first couple of songs I heard were 'Good Boy Psycho' and 'When Shadows Fall'. I was hugely impressed by these two songs and purchased the album on the strength of these tracks alone. The album as a whole shows a progression to even better songwriting and much stronger production. There is perhaps more emphasis on the keyboards than previous work, but these work brilliantly alongside strong guitar work and the lovely vocals of Kim Sevoir. It is a stronger album than 'Wintercoast' with Sevoir's vocals much more assured and combining well with the male vocal of Rob Cottingham. It has even got me dragging out 'Wintercoast' again, although 'The City Sleeps' is currently played very regularly at the moment. A great album and I hope they continue down this line. Four stars, easy!