WORTH A LOOK?: ****

Family Stereo is the ‘folkish rockery’ project of London-based songwriter Blake Watt who we 1st encountered at an east London gig last year accompanying his parents.

• Read on for reasons including everything (but the girl) we know about debut album The Thread

We said of his support to parents Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn at The MOTH Club last year: ‘Son Blake proves himself an accomplished guitarist and singer even playing a Family Stereo song and we learn that there is a debut album due soon.’

Fault Lines is the 1st single from it and is inspired by a long-distance relationship, serving as the album’s centre through ‘images of space, distance, wide open country, badlands, tunnels’.

Watt’s voice conveys the yearning of a young Morrissey crooning a slowed down: ‘Young bones groan and the rocks below say: ‘Throw your skinny body down, son’ ‘, as on Shakespeare’s Sister.

Watt told The Line Of Best Fit: ‘I like asking questions more than answering them in lyrics. A lot of the lyric writers I like do that. They will tell a story through snapshots rather than, you know, this happened and then that happened. I don’t like lyrics that are too literal because it doesn’t let the mind explore what they could be inferring. I’m trying to capture a feeling, or a sense of not understanding a feeling and trying to get to grips with that feeling.’

The Thread was recorded over nine months in north London by album producer and close collaborator Sam Hodder-Williams, who also provided string arrangements and multitasked across acoustic/electric guitar, mandolin, synths and more, with additional contributions from Pendo Masote on violin, Tom Allan on banjo, Ella Bleakley on backing vocals, and George Vaux on bass.

Watt says: “Musically, I wanted to explore folk songwriting but with a kind of lush arrangement. Sam is very good at realising a sound, and he can write string arrangements, and we wanted to throw everything in the pot but keep it kind of natural. I wanted to explore the pared-back thing but then his arrangements are quite lush, and I think they complement each other quite nicely.”

The album is called The Thread and is released 31 July. Family Stereo play The Lexington in London on 17 September.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Brennan Buccanan Tickets
• Have you seen a Family Stereo show before and what did you think of this song? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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