Soft Hearted Scientists - 'Take Time To Wonder In A Whirling World' (My King Fu) Released 06/08/07

Opening in a whirl of gentleness this album will never be something to sing along to loudly. The whimsical waves of sub genre of folk you’d like to call it make you think of days when picking blackberries from the hedgerow seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. Thoughts of carbon and growing landfills were yet to be thought. The philosophical meanderings in ’In Light Years To Nothing’  sneak up on you unawares and make you feel the line “it used to make me sad now it makes me happy who wants to be the last of anything”. This soft hearted thing appears to be more than a name.

These boys don’t screw. They make love and make you a cup of tea in the morning after hugging you all night long. As lovely as that can be, it can also become mightily annoying after a bit, and the same can be said of this CD. It’s all so sweepingly considered and thoughtful and you may become very fond of it. But it won’t invoke any great passion. ‘Siberia’ shimmers like a lovelorn artist standing in the rain outside your bedroom window. It touches your heart and makes you want to forgive its faults. But part of you knows that you this time next week you’ll be bored of it all. But it’snot all romantic lyricisms. Ok that’s a lie. It is.

‘I’ll Be Happy I’ll Be Sleeping.’ has threads of ethereal humour  that could make a grown woman cook your meals while you write songs and get hand jobs from the French girl who lives upstairs. “Oh what an imbecile desire makes of us all.”  The whimsical nature is perhaps taken to the extreme in mentions of children called Sylvie and  talk of profit margins kissing hands in ‘Eyes’ which contains a condemnation of reality television amongst a bubble of brass and xylophones. You get the impression that even when they get really cross they still say please and thank you.

The Soft Hearted Scientists are very good at what they do. They have the sensitive folk subgenre thing done and dusted. All in all ‘Take Time To  Wonder In A Whirling World’ is let down by a lack of musical diversity and a tendency to use lyrical clichés, but there are moments of warmth and feeling that stand up to repeated listening.