Fly Yellow Moon

Import! "Mainly written whilst the Guillemots [Fyfe Dangerfield's main band] toured their second album Red, Fly Yellow Moon was intended to be an album of stripped down recordings, mainly acoustic guitar or piano . . . Fly Yellow Moon is by far at its best on the songs with the most fleshed out arrangements, which invariably means they are the songs which sound the most like Guillemots. Opening track 'When You Walk In the Room' starts of with a stuttering drum machine beat, fidgety vocal tics (an adjective which is generally applicable to Dangerfield himself), clipped distortion and space echo effects more suggestive of Red's attempts at 'chart-humping R'n'B'. But this swiftly gives way to an engine of drum'n'piano chords, over which Dangerfield barks out his contentment with (his love)life: "In this moment, no-one is pulling me down into the ground". He slips into giddy falsetto for the chorus of "I Want You Endlessly" with the song ending in a racket of glorious farcical vocal tics. So far, so good. . . so Guillemots. Lead single 'She Needs Me' is even better. Its verses are again anchored by a steady beat and piano, with some showtune-style ivory tinkling a signpost to the song's glitzy chorus; strings swell slowly throughout the first verse before bursting into a chorus of widescreen Sixties indebted pop. The second verse stomps around dressed in impossibly fuzzy brass, but this is a song that's all about chorus. Producer Bernard Butler must be wishing he had a song as good as this to give Duffy, because with its parping brass section and rapturous string refrain, 'She Needs Me' could easily sit comfortably next to 'I Only Want To Be With You' on The Very Best of Dusty Springfield. However, it's infinitely more satisfying to think of Dangerfield ecstatically throwing his gangly frame around to its strains." - Neil Ashman / Drowned in Sound