Jeff Buckley has a lot to answer for. It's been ten years since the singer-songwriter's death, and with just one completed album to his name, he's still inspiring hordes of young men to pick up guitars and bare their souls to the masses - sometimes with pleasantly surprising, but mostly with terrifically dire results. Although Londoner Tom Baxter's sound is indeed, indebted to Buckley, he seems to make a concerted effort to stand out from the crowd. Having paved his way into the hearts of the post-(likeable era) David Gray legion with 2004's Feather & Stone (which spawned the catchy hit This Boy), Baxter's back with more of the same on his sophomore effort. Skybound is a predominantly straightforward album - guitar, piano and husky vocals dominate a musical landscape that's dotted with alluring string supplements - but therein also lies the problem. Better, Miracle, The Last Shot and Light Me Up are all tragically-overdone, downright boring offerings, although it's easy to see how his lyrics, appearing in the album sleeve as short stories, would appeal to the average singer-songwriter aficionado. Many tracks here also suffer from length-induced tedium, with several clocking in at over six, and even seven minutes long. Where Baxter raises his game is on the sultry, smoky jazz lounge of On A Night Like This and Tell Her Today, and on the flamenco/Arabic ambience of the title track; songs which encapsulate the essence of ambitious, classic songwriting. Unfortunately, though, it's the comparative filler tracks that prevent Skybound from ever really taking off.
