The story behind the gestation of Doug Tielli’s second solo album seems to will the listener to pull a puzzled face. The Toronto-based folkie missed a flight home and spent two months at his record label’s gaff in Keresley, a picturesque village near Coventry. How to square that unruffled Englishness with the rangy, zig-zagging sprawls of jazz improv and atomised blues that resulted from his mishap? Largely just a man and his guitar, albeit teasing out some unmappable chords, ‘Keresley’ saves its trippiest (‘Lovelovelove’) and most tender (‘A Dream That I Am’) moments until the end.
Noel Gardner