This soothes, this sways, it glides and sashays into the room like a black and white Hepburn retreating to her trailer to sink gin and allow a fleeting moment of despair before putting on the familiar Hollywood face for the cameras. The One Who Flew are airbrushed with faded glamour, they are clean and chic, confident and classy, a heady mix of sophistication and the seedy underbelly of a handful of loves lost to the world, and the songs are perfectly presented, mini kitchen sink dramas played out in suburban solitude, where the heartache and pain is always tempered by the glint of sunlight scattering through the rain streaked windows into the room.

Typically stripped back and acoustic, The One Who Flew manage to incorporate synthesised samples and sweeping, arcing swathes of sound without it becoming at all electronic or unrealistic, the record remains uncluttered yet avoids being sparse and retains a fragility whilst endeavouring to put forward a forceful message. It is intelligently put together and the warm, embracing results relieve you of any self doubt, these are songs for the hopeful, for the dreamers, for the optimists amongst us. For anyone feeling dour and down, looking out through the rain and the dark winter nights for inspiration, then your saviour and salvation may just be walking the streets of Glasgow seeing some kind of future in even the most despair ridden scenario.

Socalemo opens the album, an apologetic acoustically propelled shimmer of a song, open heart surgery for the end of the relationship, extolling feelings that are sure to be instantly recognisable to all of us who have ever been on the bad end of that line about how “...it’s not you, it’s me...”, whilst The Truth about Cats and Dogs is a chiming slice of optimism culled from those nervous weeks, days, moments that precede the dawning of a love, it’s tantalising to say the least.

N.Y. is a funkier, drum machine and scuzzy guitar driven duet between gentle male and saccharine female vocals, whilst Song for a Boy returns to the acoustic formula with sincerity and ease. Ayr is delicate, Little One is hushed, both are seeped in hope, love and optimism, we could do worse than to listen to this and take notes, life might not be perfect, but there is something that we can do about that, it’s only a signal post when the results come in, from there on we can make our own decisions and guide our own lives, it really is that simple, just sometimes it takes some kids from the city to remind us of that.

Cory’s Carnival chimes and slides by in a haze of over the garden face tittle tattle and leads effortlessly into Synth Girl which takes the listener off dreamily and points the direction home in a lo-fi, ninety seconds about “...three little words and a girl that I should shout more about...”.

The album is bookended at the opposite end from Socalemo by Transparency, a tale of how the object of your desires can see straight through you, how they know what you want to say, and what you really mean when you do eventually manage to garner the courage to blurt out some clumsy variation of your true feelings. It’s an enchanting and obvious, yet strangely unique tale of how love transcends all of our human ineptitudes, our bumbling politeness and awkward silences. Funny that, when I think about it I realise just how spot on these words are, I just needed it spelling out to me, and The One Who Flew do just that, with panache and style, sensitivity and eloquence, and with this record, a soundtrack to a film without a film to go with it, just the film of all our lives, and it sounds just perfect.  

Johnny Mac

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