Westerman - Your Hero Is Not Dead [OPIASR1140LP]

Label: Partisan 

On Your Hero Is Not Dead, Will Westerman creates gentle music made up of elements from experimental pop albums. Talk Talk is an obvious influence (the hero alluded to in the album’s title refers to the band’s late vocalist Marc Hollis), but so are folk musicians like John Martyn and Joni Mitchell. Martyn’s synthesizer explorations led to his 1977 album One World, and Mitchell’s 1985 record Dog Eat Dog combined hypnotic production and lyrics in service of pop prophecies of doom. With the help of Nathan Jenkins, aka producer Bullion, Westerman achieves a synthesis of these previous experiments, fusing together whimsical curiosity and technical proficiency. Over a backdrop made of the sounds of the past, his lucid yet uncomplicated lyrics interrogate the uncertainty of the present.