Album Review: Sailing

Seasoned front man Nicholas Joseph, known for such projects as Deer Park and Vacants, returns to the scene and delivers a worthy independent solo album to join the upper ranks of the heavy hitters in the genre. Reminiscent of late 2000’s indie records, Nicholas uses all his creative experience to deliver a stunning debut record and a new soundtrack to all your favourite things. You can cook breakfast to it, you can entertain friends with it and you can even attempt to get to third base with it.

Although Sailing is disguised as a humble stripped down solo album, the choruses such as on Living are baked in fuzzed-out guitar, adding a fantastic counter balance to the gorgeous harmonies layered onto all of the tracks. And it’s the vocals and their harmonies that shine the brightest on this album. 

Nicholas has an incredibly inviting voice that holds and comforts you. Make It Simple is a delightfully slowed down track with an easy beat, but the big wave of beautiful harmonies elevate it to another level. Like ice cream on a summer’s day, Make It Simple just melts into Reminding, the song beside it on the track list. This album is designed to be listened to with your eyes shut and by this point you’ll be floating into the atmosphere. A wonderful touch are the gorgeous outros on a number of the tracks that let songs trail off in a new direction, like on Final Chance or ringing out slowly with Reminding. Giving Up may be the most upbeat or ‘heaviest’ song on the album but its outro transpires into a choir of angels delivering you to the pearly gates themselves.

Joseph recorded this album over the course of just 3 days, describing the recording process as “getting a lo-fi, crunchy sound as opposed to a ‘well-produced’ big stadium sounding album”. This is something that worked in his favour and Nicholas had the foresight of exactly what he wanted to achieve with the album. It’s a record full of vintage sounding guitar riffs and 2000’s throwbacks. You can imagine going to the store to buy it on CD as the only way to listen to it. You never get to hear records like Sailing these days without being full of nostalgia good or bad, so it’s great to listen to something like this and put some fresh memories down to the genre.

Albums to complement Nicholas Joseph – Sailing

Band Of Horses – Everything All The Time – 2006

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest – 2009

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Unknown Mortal Orchestra – 2011