BLAUDZUN - Heavy Flowers

"The difficult third album", ran a caption on the cover of Billy Bragg's masterpiece "Talking With The Taxman About Poetry", tongue firmly in cheek, a reminder that the release of a third record is the crucial moment when listeners finally start asking themselves about a musician's artistic maturity and the actual worth of what they have to offer.

And it's with full awareness of this premise that John Sigmond, aka Blaudzun, arrives at his own fateful moment of truth, buoyed by a couple of albums that were greeted enthusiastically in his native Netherlands and reviewed favourably over here too, while everyone waited for that definitive consecration.

It should be said right away that, from a purely formal standpoint, "Heavy Flowers" is certainly a flawlessly crafted record. The pact between artist and listener — with the latter well aware they can expect to find all the basic ingredients of a 2012 folk-pop singer-songwriter album — is faithfully honoured: acoustic guitars, strings, mandolin, piano, accordion and a languid, plaintive voice all slot together, exactly as expected, into minimalist arrangements that provide the backdrop against which Blaudzun can coddle his tormented soul of an apocalyptic prophet.

"Everything In Its Right Place", Radiohead sang a decade or so ago, but as soon as you ask yourself whether the qualities just mentioned are enough to make an album a satisfying experience, problems start to emerge. The songwriting, first of all. Because the instrumental parts, accomplished as they are, end up feeling like an end in themselves, especially when the melodic lines of tracks like the opener "Flame On My Head" or the cinematic "We Both Know" drift by, tired and insubstantial.

It doesn't help that the epigonism is often excessive, as in the case of the muddled gallops "Le Chant De Cigales" and "Sunday Porch", where the knowing wink to Arcade Fire comes across more as a breathless chase than a deliberate, shrewd and above all personal choice to ride the wave.

A shame, because just as one is about to resign oneself to the reality of a work that's well constructed but passes by leaving virtually no trace, a few timid cries emerge, like a claustrophobic "Who Took The Wheel", wisely counterpointed by accordion, or a bare "Monday", in which the Dutch songwriter tiptoes over faint caresses of acoustic guitar and piano.

The overall direction of the album is, however, well captured by the controversial single "Elephants" and its constant piling-up of likely vocal and instrumental hooks, which ultimately proves adept at circling the target with great ease without ever truly hitting it.

In essence, Blaudzun's "difficult third album" leaves more doubts than certainties. For listeners who favour form over substance, "Heavy Flowers" will slot effortlessly into the list of 2012's reference records, thanks to its near-flawless adherence to the dogmas of the modern "indie-folk-pop" songwriter. Everyone else, however, will be unable to avoid labelling its author as just another passenger on the bandwagon of followers.

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13/02/2012