The Milk & Honey Band
Dog Eared Moonlight
(Ape Records, 2009)

Being unfamiliar with UK singer-songwriter Robert White’s former band, Levitation, I had very little to direct me to his current outfit, the Milk & Honey Band, other than the implied endorsement of XTC’s Andy Partridge, whose label, Ape Records, has released their new album, Dog Eared Moonlight, just as they did the band’s prior offering, The Secret Life of the Milk & Honey Band. Happily, this bit of back channel knowledge not only resulted in my discovery of an extremely talented songwriter and his band, but it also helped me get past the band’s name, which (wrongly) seemed to evoke a bible-thumping Christian ministry.

Being a rather devout fan of XTC, I had of course assumed that White and his crew would sound exactly like the Bard of Swindon himself, Mr. Partridge, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. It happens to not be the case, however, and White not only avoids emulation of his label boss, but is possessed of an original voice that is entirely worthy of your unbiased attention.

Dog Eared Moonlight features 10 tracks of mature songcraft captured with simple but spotless production values. Its often remote, bucolic ambiance plays back great in noise-canceling headphones or on an iPod soundtrack for a tramp through your local woods.

Starting out as White’s self-recorded solo project, the Milk & Honey Band has recently become a five-piece affair, but make no mistake; the music on this album retains a single-minded focus and sobriety that can only come from a man who spends a bit of time in isolation. Dog Eared Moonlight is not only one of the best album titles I’ve heard in a while—the cover art is modeled on those old, tattered orange Penguin novels that turn up in used bookstores—the literary imagery perfectly suits that tone of the music. There’s a vaguely musty, antiquarian feel to the production—which is not to say dusty, for this is a sonically pristine experience—that suitably complements White’s deep, confident vocals and meaningful lyrics.

Lead track “Just You” soothes the ear with soft, finger-picked guitar, joined later by clean and spacious contrapuntal electric guitar, delicate piano, and flute, over which White’s relaxed vocal, bearing a distant relation to Nick Drake, lays out a frank slab of agnosticism on the table. “So don’t be scared cause there’s no meaning,” White warns, “There is no god, there’s no devil, it’s just you.”

After this Lamaze birth, the album picks up slightly with the percussive acoustic guitar and first appearance of drums on “Incredible Visions.” Granted, there are moments here where White does, in fact, approach an XTC sensibility, although to my ears the song has more in common with late lamented Liverpool band the La’s. Speaking of other bands, for that is how we often relate to music, “Waste of Time” is garnished with a distinctly Bends-era Radiohead flavor, via the extremely compressed electric guitars and detached vocal persona, while the lyrics reinforce Moonlight’s bookish concept, urging the listener to “Occupy your mind and feed your head / Eat a book before you go to bed.”

At first blush, “Maryfaith Autumn” seems like the work of Brian Wilson’s distant English cousin, but on closer inspection, the track’s arpeggiated pianos and counter melodies hearken back to chamber-prog pioneers Gentle Giant, only without all the yelling. As the song plays out, it takes on a vaguely European mood evocative of Euro-serialists like Stereolab or the High Llamas. Somewhere there is a French film searching for this song as its theme.

White then travels into Neil Finn-ish waters on “Absolutely Wrong”, which features a sweeping harp intro giving way to a bevy of sprightly strummed acoustic guitars. It’s all very confident-sounding, which is somewhat ironic in that the song’s lyrics state a firm belief that no one knows anything and we’ve got it all absolutely wrong. If Coldplay’s Chris Martin ever strayed from the big statements and pomp, perhaps he’d settle into a song like White’s lovely and dreamlike “Disappear.” For English guys, the Milk & Honey Band pull off a pretty good American high lonesome sound on the pedal steel-drenched “No World at All”, in which White’s laidback and sporadically double-tracked vocals echo across a sonic tableau that makes their native Brighton feel a little like Texas. “Cut the Line” brings it back to Britain a bit, with a slight implication of English pop bands like the Beatles or the Hollies. Closing with “Flowers”, White longs for “a place I used to know, that’s way out of town,” and it becomes clear that what makes this music so compelling is that very sense of longing itself. Like a realist painter, whose works at first seem as common as a photograph, deeper listening reveals layers of meaning that aren’t immediately apparent. Like a good, worn-in paperback read by a crackling fire in a log cabin, Dog Eared Moonlight is a must-read for your ears. If you’ve got the time, Dog Eared Moonlight rewards your patient attention with elegant, intelligent music.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]