Travels with Matsui 'Hanging Around' -- Gemma Hayes

What? Another lost cause? I hope not. When I told my Mother that I'd bought this single, and that there only seemed to be ten copies in the shop, she suggested that they should have taken my name and address so that the singer could personally send me a thank you note for the support. Considering my choice last week, Bellefire stormed in at, well, number 18. I don't see this one charting at all, which is a shame as its a luminous piece of guitar rock. She's from Lymeric in Ireland although sound is pure American highroad ... On her website, Hayes descibes the impitous for the song:
"It's kind of about wanting to be in love with this person, wanting a house, being really chilled, and how life would be rosy from then on. And you get there but everything you wanted just makes you feel bored. It's about that uneasy feeling of having everything here, but I'm still not fucking happy'."

First Impressions? The video (which features on the single) is another in the female singer-songwriter-in-a-loft genre (see Dido's 'Thank you' and Natalie Imbruglia's 'Torn'). She's an extremely attractive girl, but for once this doesn't get in the way of the music. She's selling a dream herself -- that she's singing only two you and it works. Watching her pick up her guitar at the outset made my heart stop.

Moved? Oh yes. This is Sheryl Crow before the stadiums got in the way. The kind of music I wished I'd find at 'The Picket' in Liverpool on a Friday instead of three interchangable bands all playing Oasis covers. She's not in the business of telling a story, more a matter of impressions. It's about killing time until you fulfill the next dream.

Lasing impressions Again, I do hope she'll have some success. I'm not sure it is significantly different to what has gone before, but it's certainly another antidote to the rest of the singles released this week.

Keep, sell or dump? Keep. Then buy the album. I'm sorry, but I'm beside myself.

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