NOT as wet as Romeo before Juliet, nor as charming as Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s smitten Tom in (500) Days Of Summer, and without the cutting blade of Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, Charlie Fink has nevertheless written the definitive young Englishman’s break-up diary.
Out goes the one-hit-wonder fey folk of 5 Years Time; in comes a season-by-season account of the despair, disdain, healing, setbacks and eventual recovery of lovelorn Charlie after his split from his teenage love, fellow songwriter Laura Marling.
Fink emerges from the depths with the aid of choirs, strings worthy of Robert Kirby’s arrangements for Nick Drake, instrumental interludes and love songs that bury as deeply as The Smiths or Prefab Sprout.
Ignore the pay-extra coda of Fink’s pretty if pretty pointless neo-French art-house film; here is a proper album to defy the iPod shufflers.
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