You don’t often hear an album as elegant and beautiful as No One Deserves You, Crayon Fields’ first record in six years. But while modern culture has rendered beauty a cheap contrivance of narcissistic obsession and digital imagery, the structure and presentation of No One Deserves You would send Kenneth Clark into paroxysms of excitement.
The album’s aesthetic owes more than a gelled nod to the synth-happy world of early-‘80s new wave. The billowing melody of Slow Magic and recalls Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark; She’s My Hero is crying out for a smoke machine and a little bit of Scritti Politti on the side; Love Won’t Save You gets your hips wiggling like some fop-fringed chemical concoction; No One Deserves You thrusts you into a synth-reggae groove; and If I Could is The Go-Betweens in a fluoro-lit London club.
Side two opens with the wandering Night Moves: has there ever been such an enjoyable nocturnal stroll with such a slick riff? Possibly, but before you’ve had time to think about it, Give Him Nothing has you pondering the nadir of emotional estrangement. The atmosphere of So Do I is buoyant, its melodic structure pithy; Somewhere Good is everything the title suggests, and then some; and as Good Times ushers the record out with a hint of Dropbears by way of The Blow Monkeys, you’re transported to a world where everything seems a shitload better than it really is.
BY PATRICK EMERY
