Boo Hewerdine - 'Harmonograph' (MVine) Released 23/01/06

Bible Basher Boo Hewerdine certainly knows how to pen a song or two or try 400, which he had to choose from to populate ‘Harmonograph’.

Writing for Eddie Reader, KD Lang and Natalie Imbruglia amongst others and scoring music for ‘Fever Pitch’ and ‘Twenty Four Seven’ this bloke certainly knows what he’s doing and his skill cometh alive on the memorable ‘Ontario’ and ‘Weatherman’ but the rest of it is a bit Noel Edmonds’ House Party. The album is named after a “drawing machine invented in the mid-nineteenth century, using two or more pendulums to reveal the beautiful and intricate patterns found in music” (basically, an Etch-a-Sketch or Spirograph depending on how good you were the month before Christmas). You kind of expect Boo’s music to be on those cosy dramas that are always on Sunday TV. Well, he’s gone one better than that, the little scallywag had one of his tunes featured on Emmerdale.

Pleasantries aside its time to throw a few stones at the old-guard. You can bet any available currency that Boo lives on a farm or similar sized estate with animals, loving - doting wife and three kids (2 girls and a boy), writing tunes in his home studio and wanking off about environmental issues that are affecting the surrounding countryside and the modernisation threatening the nearby village. Soon the kids will start smoking dope in the barn and listening to loads of music including their old man’s and Boo will start to wonder why they don’t talk to him anymore. It will be at this point that Boo will receive an anonymous letter that simply states, “Because you’re a bit naff”. Irrespective of Boo’s musical output this will hardly leave a ripple in the stream of ideas. If you do happen to purchase this out of curiosity then it will eventually be forgotten at the back of the pile.