Brûlée cover

Brûlée

Released

The project of Thomas Jean Henri (aka Thomas Van Cottom) – perhaps best known for membership of Soy Un Caballo, whose 2007 album, Les Heures Du Raison, featured a guest appearance from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Cabane has spent the past decade perfecting a seductive kind of folk-informed pop song. Henri’s writing is sophisticated without feeling forced or pretentious, and by tapping Sean O’Hagan of The High Llamas on the shoulder for string arrangements, he ensures the songs are swaddled in lovely textural washes. He tends to draw from the same pool of guest vocalists – Kate Stables (of This Is The Kit) and Sam Genders (Tunng, The Accidental, Diagrams, Throws) are the voices here, and they read as familiar friends, particularly if you’ve been following the arc of Henri’s career (Genders is on the preceding Cabane album, Grande Est La Maison; Stables goes further back, to the Soy Un Caballo album). The art here, I guess, is the way Henri squeezes such depth and comfort out of this assembled cast, everything dappled with the distanced melancholy that’s his trademark.

Jon Dale

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