Telegraph

With his second solo album, Richard Davies goes widescreen, cinematic. With mercurial ex-Flaming Lips guitarist Ronald Jones as his right-hand man, Davies’s writing is bolder and more open, his arrangements breathe more naturally; these are great pop songs painted in sun-burnished tints and finished with surprising details. There’s still a sense, here, of Davies grappling with new life in a new land, but it’s less overtly nostalgic about his former home Australia, and more observational, finding a sense of self and place to be in his newly discovered, quietly phantastic America.