James Hindle Prospect Park CD

James Hindle's sophomore release shows the British folk singer hitting his stride with 11 songs of gentle, well-crafted simplicity, laced with a good deal of pop sensibilities. Each tune is held together by a variety of instruments including harmonica, organ, violin, piano, and glockenspiel. Most of the tunes have a pleasant disposition, some are more somber, others are rather rollicking. Hindle's voice is tender and reminiscent of some of the great folk-balladeers like John Denver and Paul Simon. Prospect Park shows a good deal of progress for Hindle, and is much more interesting than his debut, yet still it is by no means revolutionary. Sometimes, however, folk tunes are fine and beautiful in their absolute simplicity. James Hindle has proven that point quite well on Prospect Park. ~ Kurt Morris

James William HindleProspect Park (Badman Recording Co.) What, you didn't know that British folk is suddenly hip this year? Don't you read Mike McGuirk? It's true. All those Richard Thompson jokes made by smarmy young music critics have come back to bite them all in the arse like a pair of 20-sided dice with rotting, crooked teeth. It may have started when the folks at Volkswagen took liberties with a dead man's song--every record collector has a friend who was livid when Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" suddenly served to hock the convertible Cabriolet. Or it may have begun when Welsh band Gorky's Zygotic Mynci dressed up their outstanding 2001 album The Blue Trees with the same kind of woodland instrumentation and dislocated arrangements once reserved for recordings by UK hippie folk rockers, the Incredible String Band. Hell, even the Winter Flowers were getting so popular this year that they had to pack up their lutes and leave the Bay Area for Los Angeles. And now that Pavement's Stephen Malkmus has begun ripping off Mellow Candle guitar leads and dropping names like Vashti Bunyan, it just makes more sense that a guy like James William Hindle could make a subtly stylish and exquisite sounding album like Prospect Park in the year 2003. Not that he's singing about faeries and mice and shit, but with a backing band that comprises members of Ladybug Transistor and Essex Green, Hindle's sophomoric long player is made up of the kind of amorous songs that will sit well between Nick Drake musings and Sandy Denny outtakes on that mixed tape you've been making to impress the cute girl at the record store who told you she likes the Fairport Convention. Hindle gets extra points for actually being English and for rocking a pointy beard on the gatefold picture of this fine recording. He's done for British folk what the Beachwood Sparks did for '70s LA canyon rock. Eric Shea- East Bay Express

Recorded at Marlborough Farms, Brooklyn, New York.

Personnel: James Hindle (vocals, guitar); Julia Rydholm (vocals, violin); Christopher Ziter (vocals); Neil Cleary (guitar, organ, drums); Kevin Barker (guitar, glockenspiel); Jeff Baron (guitar); Sasha Bell (piano, organ).

Audio Mixers: Christopher Ziter; Britt Myers.

Recording information: Tup Keewah Recordings, Brooklyn, NY (10/2002-11/2002).

Photographer: Paul Heartfield.

Personnel: James William Hindle (vocals, guitar); Julia Rydholm (vocals, violins); Christopher Ziter (vocals, bass); Neil Cleary (guitar, organ, drums); Jeff Baron (guitar, bass); Sasha Bell (piano, organ).

Uncut (p.88) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[With] a light intimacy and sly lyricism..."
The Wire (1/04, p.68) - "[T]he single most affecting aspect of PROSPECT PARK is its intimacy."