Candidate Under the Skylon

Candidate are Joel and Alex Morris, Ian Painter and Mr Chris White, alongside occasional sidekicks Alex Donohoe, Jason (of Ben & Jason), and Steven Adams of The Broken Family Band, and they produce bewitching, heartbreaking, clever folk music. After a series of EPs in the late 90s and early 00s, they earned ripples of praise for the Tiger Flies LP before releasing the widely acclaimed Nuada album in 2002. Nuada was remarkable record, creating a fantasy musical landscape from the early seventies, drawing on such folk monsters as Pentangle in order to provide an alternative soundtrack for the cult British horror movie The Wicker Man. Nuada was a simple, artisan album, using hand percussion, vocals and acoustic instruments, and recorded for minimal investment.

Under the Skylon thus marks something of a musical digression. Eager not to be labelled 'the alternative soundtracks band,' or 'that Wicker Man group,' their return sees them masquerading as different musical characters altogether. Joel suggests a very simple ethos behind the album: 'To keep some sense of unity, we started out imagining that it was recorded at the same fictional time as the last one (our imaginary version of the early 1970s, but with DX7 synthesisers and sequencers) only by a different band. If we imagined Nuada had been recorded by, say, Pentangle in one studio, this was going to be the record The Bee Gees or Neil Young or Big Star or The Hollies had been working on next door at the same time.' The Neil Young reference is perhaps most revealing, as folk-rock lyricism and harmonies influenced by the great man dominate much of this album, as demonstrated on opener Going Outside.

Thematically, the album revolves around the image of the Skylon, a graceful structure that hovered on London's South Bank in 1951 to celebrate the Festival of London, and was then torn down by a subsequent government, leaving no trace except photographs and the unfortunately unmarred visage of the Hayward Gallery. Its rise and fall becomes a trobar clus conceit for the parabola of the relationship between lovers. This is a move typical of a band specialising in extended images and complex constructs, whose lyrics - so rare these days - are actually worth listening to, as on Glass Skylon, where the central image of the album is concentrated and refined down to the bitter words of parting. On Falling Leaves, the decline towards separation is portrayed in autumnal lyrical and musical tones worthy of Simon and Garfunkel. They also do FM radio-friendly pop; Mountain Snow sounds like The Lenomheads, while Nothing Between Us But Sky is a lilting ballad worthy of REM at their heights. They can also rock out, ever so slightly - perhaps the influence of man at the controls, Darren Allison, producer of Spiritualized and My Bloody Valentine - as on the folk wall-of-sound Another One Down.

Under the Skylon is an accomplished, touching album, worthy of the support it's garnered from the likes of Mark Radcliffe and Clare Sturgess. Like the Skylon, it's beautiful, fragile, and kind of alone. It needs your company, and like a faithful family pet or a book you loved as a kid, it will look after you back.