The Oldman Sound make the kind of music that rewards a second listen. And on Fair-weather, the South Shields band lean into melody, melancholy and arrangement instead of trying to overpower the listener. Across three tracks, their off-centre pop instincts come into focus through bittersweet writing, inventive structures and a sense that familiar guitar music can still be made to feel slightly strange.
The influence of Wilco, XTC, ELO, The Kinks, Field Music, Midlake, The Shins and The Beatles is easy to understand, but those touchpoints appear more in the way the songs are assembled: strong melodic foundations, unexpected turns, and arrangements that seem to keep revealing new details around the edges.
The title-track sets the tone well. ‘Fair-weather’ feels understated, allowing the band’s ear for melody and emotional ambiguity to do the work. That same restraint carries into ‘Dead Strings’, while ‘Tame (A Saint’s Life)’ pushes further into the project’s more idiosyncratic side.
What began as a home-recorded project for Andrew Coiley and Andrew Forster has grown into something far more collaborative, with Kristos Kabiotis, Wez Westgate and Sarah Farrell-Forster now forming the core line-up alongside them. Sessions with producers Adam Forster and Mark Broughton have helped expand that original idea into a broader catalogue of more than twenty songs.
Nothing here feels rushed or engineered for maximum impact. The music has the patience of a band more interested in character than polish, and that makes its moments of beauty land even harder.
Their live history is still relatively selective, but appearances alongside Gruff Rhys, Field Music, Nev Clay and SLUG suggest they have already connected with audiences drawn to thoughtful, melodic music that values detail over spectacle.
Fair-weather is a compact release, but it makes a convincing case for The Oldman Sound. Warm, slightly skewed and quietly memorable, it proves that sometimes the most interesting songwriting is the kind that refuses to walk in a straight line.