Angus Stone made his name as the other half of the Australian brother-sister folk combo Angus and Julia Stone. But perhaps for more creative control, or out of desire to get out of one another’s self-reflecting shadow they’ve decided to fly solo once again. This time Angus Stone sheds his moniker, Lady of the Sunshine, and lays himself bare… but this is a first only in sense of name. For the Stones, success has always lain in their ability to merge personal affliction with professional musicianship and create a product mastered for a mass audience. Angus Stone does not set this formula aside. On Broken Brights we get much of the same tales of love, desire and loss. Though Angus Stone sans Julia is still pretty much equivalent to Angus and Julia Stone, Broken Brights is defiant of any criticism this comparison will garner. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”: because the results will be just as glowing.

Broken Brights begins with the tentative whistles of the harmonica on ‘River Love’. It’s a song of reflection. Stone is racking his mind over love: “Do I love her for beauty/Do I love her/She makes me smile/Do I love her because it’s my duty/But I guess we’ll never really know”. The honesty of his delivery draws the listener in, and we are entwined in his world, as well as our own, with the utterance of a couple of sentences. ‘River Love’ goes on to explode into an abyss of Gaelic folk but then slides back into its origins, asking starkly: “Will she bring roses when I’m dead?”

The title track follows. It’s stripped back and simple but it’s also the album’s high point, discussing the nostalgic urge to go back to a place connected to youth’s uncomplicated hedonism: ‘Take me home/Where them broken brights/Are shining down/Make me feel alright”. We can rightly assume that Angus is talking about his home on “…the northern beaches of Sydney” as he slowly strums his prized guitar, but this song demonstrates his ability to place his individual stamp on a song and still make it something completely relatable. Home is as much the northern beaches of Sydney as it is my own western suburb of the West Midlands, or whatever points on the map his 15,634 last.fm listeners belong to. This also goes for the electric infected ‘Bird on a Buffalo’ or the stoical western ‘The Blue Door’. ‘Only A Woman’ is another delightful slow ballad possessing a powerful chorus that would make Neil Young proud.

Broken Brights isn’t groundbreaking folk, nor is it a great departure from Angus as Lady of the Sunshine or with his older sister; perhaps rightly so. Angus isn’t trying to be what The Postal Service is to Death Cab for Cutie or pull off a Dev Hynes-style transformation. He has one craft and it’s a craft that he has mastered. Broken Brights is a collection of inoffensive folk pop songs, honestly sung to produce a body of emotion that anyone in or out of love and desire will relate to.

Listen to Broken Brights