The path walked by Guy Connolly's Clock Opera throughout Ways To Forget is a dangerous one. The album is crammed full of intricately constructed electro-pop songs and is very, very ambitious - perhaps overly so - but crucially it rarely loses the run of itself by getting lost under a sheen of studio trickery. Connolly's songs, not the technology which gives them life, are at the centre of this and rightfully so.
Ways To Forget is clearly the outcome of significant time and effort. Every available sonic space within the album is filled with something, be it 80's-tinged synth or Connolly's falsetto vocals, and the "throw it at the wall and see if it sticks" approach works in this instance, as evidenced by stand-out tracks like 'Man Made' and the outstanding 'A Piece of String' - a song only now finding a home on an LP despite initially being released over two years ago.
Ways To Forget occasionally neglects to allow enough cracks in the music for a melody to shine through, as is the case with 'Lesson No.7' and 'White Noise' - two songs which flatter to deceive among the 10 song collection but, as a whole, Ways To Forget is a good album and definitely deserving of your time.