Bill Jones Ryder - Yawn

180gm vinyl LP pressing. The 10 songs on Yawn, multi-instrumentalist, producer, string-arranger and composer Bill Ryder-Jones' fourth studio album, are everyday stories about situations we all fall from and into, out of and back up against the wall again - and they are sung to us, up close, by a voice still in hock to a few uncomfortable truths. The album was recorded and produced entirely by Bill himself, with a little help from friends including guest vocals from The Orielles and Our Girl. Mixing was done by Craig Silvey (Portishead, The Horrors, Arcade Fire). Yawn is a buckle-up and knuckle-down listen that rewards the listeners' attention with motifs and melodies that play hide and seek but never fail to deliver on those between-the-lines verities. This musical belief of delayed gratification is something Bill learnt from classical music as a child, from Elgar and Debussy in particular - and over the long hall of his short life, you can hear these riches being polished on Yawn. Most of the songs clock-in over the 5 minute mark and this wide-angle lens affords us time to interpret and translate meaning - or just to revel in it.