...& A Baptism?

Giving your editor's band a lukewarm review - if you can get past that, you've got a good working relationship! The only thing the band got upset about was that I called the record a "demo", whereas they imagined it as an EP. To my mind, unless your record's got a barcode on the back and you pay tax if you buy one, it's a demo, not a proper release, but I appreciate I'm woefully C20th in this respect.

THE MILE HIGH YOUNG TEAM - FOUR SEPARATIONS

It's an odd name, The Mile High Young Team. Not only does it bring to mind unpleasant images of cramped airplane toilet sex with Mogwai, but it's also paradxically attached to a band that sounds comfortably middle-aged and defiantly earthbound. I don't mean that as a criticism, but this is a demo far more concerned with quality, song strucutre and elegance than the majority of local discs that fall into our hands. At their best TMHYT manage to weave a delicate spell of literate melancholy (imagine weeping quietly onto a well worn volume of Mallarme whilst sipping fine cognac) but occasionally they do enter an arid valley of well-produced politeness located somewhere in 1987.

"Distance Between Them" is an enticing opener, loping along at a friendly pace and augmenting its winningly natural vocals with some fairground keyboard swirls and eloquent 'cello. In fact, throughout the demo 'cellist Caroline Taylor provides some enticing embellishments - the 'cello has become something of a lazy signifier of brainy intensity nowadays, with every other singer-songwriter in town trying to snatch a little Nick Drake cachet by inviting Barney Morse-Brown onstage, so it's refreshing to hear it used intelligently. It's also something of a surprise to hear The Evenings' manic sticksman Mark Wilden play with such restraint throughout. Like local balladeers script, TMHYT are adept at marrying arrangments that are clever yet understated with an ear for a pleasing melody.

But restraint can be a burden, and occasionally this demo steps gingerly when it should be leaping headlong: witness Emily Aldworth Davis' threats to "explode like an atom bomb". Can't imagine it myself. Similarly "Letter From Rosanna" has a chorus that is perhaps meant to be rousing, but comes off sounding as exhausted as if it had spent all night playing rummy with Deacon Blue in Billy Joel's rumpus room.

However, this is the only really duff point of the demo, and perhaps it's unfair to focus on it when in the main TMHYT offer such accessible, intricate and emotive songwriting coupled with asured performances (witness aching, wistful closing track "The Bering Straits"). We definitely expect to make time in the future to see what TMHYT does next, but we don't expect to be making space for them in our rock pantheon any time soon.