Helen Newbery

‘This City Draws Maps’ is the debut album from The Rosie Taylor Project, on Leeds-based independent Bad Sneakers Records. Despite there being six of them, it has an acoustic feel, and it’s an utterly beguiling listen, full of lush harmonies and surprisingly subtle brass touches.

Opening track ‘The Sun On My Right’ is utterly gorgeous, and the ideal showpiece for the world-weary voice of Jonny Davies. This lassitude extends to the lyrics: ("Your breath tells of dark rum"). His vocals are perfectly counterbalanced by the softer tones of Sophie Barnes, and the acoustic feel is interspersed with lush horns.

‘Anne Sexton’ is jauntier, and again has a fairly acoustic feel to it, but this is bolstered with a more twangly guitar sensibility. There’s more jangly guitar on ‘A Good Café on George Street’. It’s an album highlight, perhaps its most upbeat song, and the first single to be taken from it.

‘Reveries’ is suitably reflective, and ‘Black and White Films’ is simply beautiful, with its lush melody, picked out sympathetically on guitar. By contrast, ‘London Pleasures’ is much funkier, with a meatier feel, but it still has the trademark brass sound. ‘A Few Words Of Farewell’ is almost timorous in comparison, but again, it’s the brass which really bolsters things.

Overall, ‘This City Draws Maps’ has some gorgeous melodies allied to an assured instrumentation, rendering it an understated gem.

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