Roddy Frame - Surf (CD 2004)

If you like to hear singer-songwriters bearing their soul, then this album is for you. Roddy Frame has a searching and, at times, a soulful voice. All the songs here are extremely well sung and beautifully played - Frame is an underrated guitarist.
Some may be put off by the sparse production - all eleven tracks feature vocal and acoustic guitar only. For me, this is part of the appeal of this fine collection of songs - it serves as a magnet for the listener, to the brilliant and quite moving lyrics.
I came across this album via the unlikely source of a (excellent) sit-com: "Early Doors". The title song from this tv series is the chorus from the third song on "Surf", namely "Small World".
The former Aztec Camera frontman has, like many before him, matured with age and the experience of life; songs like "Over You" and "Mixed up Love" demonstrate this quite clearly.
With his words, Frame can just as easily transport you to another time and place as well as make us relate quite devastatingly, to emotions and feelings that we all experience, by sheer poetry: "Though I know that only love can set you free, when it falls to me, I'm not the best example; And if the prophets knocked my door with all that heaven held in store, I'd probably ask to see a sample" is probably the best description of the hesitancy of love I've ever heard.
The songs are not over-played - in fact only one of the songs is approaching the four-minute mark. So the eleven songs equate to 35 minutes - not too long for an album with only two instruments (if you include the voice), and just long enough to give you a feeling of satisfaction at listening to a beautiful collection of songs sung and played with great feeling and honesty.