Jacco Gardner -‘Hypnophobia.’ (Full Time Hobby)

This album from the Dutch multi-instrumentalist Jacco Gardner is little short of fantastic. Over the course of these ten songs and forty minutes he presents us with an amazing piece of work that is a wonderful exercise in what might best be described as pastoral psychedelia.

It’s a record that evokes Love’s seminal Forever Changes album with Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, and a touch of Nick Drake about the guitar playing. But it’s not just the feel of the record, it’s the fact that he’s got the songs to go with it, and the voice to deliver them, too.

There’s a timeless quality about these songs, like the opener ‘Another You’ and the epic ‘Before The Dawn’ and what makes it all the more impressive is that it does not feel like an exercise in borrowed nostalgia but one that seems to be looking to the future as much as to the past. An album that reveals more and more with every lesson.

One of the best albums so far this year.

****1/2

Hypnophobia is out on May 4 on Full Time Hobby.