Listening to this album has been a reacquainting with a voice which was a brief obsession for me back in the distant past of 1998. That was the year that Gomez released their debut album Bring It On, which I loved at the time, but haven’t heard again since. I recall the stand-out tracks being those sung by Ben Ottewell, a huge guttural beast of a voice, ravaged beyond his tender years and adding a depth and gravitas to songs which would have been lesser without it.

Now my memory may not be serving me well 13 years later, but on his debut solo album his voice seems less raw, somewhat smoothed out. This was in my mind during the title track, the first on Shapes & Shadows, when Ottewell started singing “smooth those lines away”. And several listens later, this pretty much represents my ambivalence towards this album. It’s just a bit too smoothed out.

Sure, it’s a record that’s hard to really dislike. It’s full of well-crafted songs, put together with a lot of love and care, even passion. He’s got a great knack with a melancholic tune and there’s a real latent soufulness amidst the rootsy sounds. But too often, there’s just too much glossy production. The songs are decent enough, but I’d have preferred to hear Ottewell’s impressive voice with minimum accompaniment, stripped back and uncluttered. Ironically when he comes closest to doing this, it’s on the piano ballad ‘Close’, the album’s least engaging song.

Ottewell has proved his songwriting chops in the past and his ability isn’t in question. He clearly knows what he wants to do now, but it’s just that for this old, occasional Gomez fan, Shapes & Shadows isn’t the record to show off that talent to the world. A bit less on the arrangements and a bit more on the grit would probably have nailed it.