Julian Pitt from Wales might be one of the great secrets of the music world among those who like chamber pop these days. I say chamber pop as there's not really a term to describe the sort of music Pitt makes as Armstrong. The newest record, Happy Graffiti, is out now via TheBeautifulMusic.com, and it's another excellent release full of the sort of music that soundtracked the best moments of your life in earlier decades.
From the Roddy Frame yearning of "Eyes Open Wide" to the spry joy of "Keep on Walking", every cut here is well-crafted, elegant, and simply rendered. The chords and hooks are worthy of comparison to the greats of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, even as Pitt seems to be writing stuff that's now very nearly its own genre. Fans of Lloyd Cole, Prefab Sprout, and The Smiths might find moments here that feel familiar, but as is more often the case, Julian Pitt is also heir to a tradition we can trace further back to The Left Banke.
"When We Were Young", for example, recalls The La's but it also sounds a bit like any number of Big Beat groups from after the rise of The Beatles. There's a brightness here that is beguiling, but Pitt usually finds some sort of happy-sad vibe in his music, a vibe that puts some of this near the ballpark of Belle & Sebastian's more recent efforts, surprisingly. I could write about any cut here, really, but the point to stress is just how consistent Pitt's talents are. I can think of few other writers out there now doing this sort of material, this well, this regularly.
Happy Graffit is out now via TheBeautifulMusic.com.