Nick Mulvey: First Mind

Nick Mulvey knows how the business works: he's a former member of the 2008 Mercury Music Prize-nominated Portico Quartet (one of those bands you never hear of before the nominations are announced). For the past few years, however, unruffled by expectations, Mulvey has flown under the radar, supporting the likes of Laura Marling (clearly a kindred spirit), delving even further into his ethnomusicalogical interests, and refining his folk/pop style to the degree that he sounds much more than just provisionally skilled. The songs on Mulvey's solo debut album owe inevitable but tentative debts to influences ranging from the usual (Nick Drake) to the not so (Roy Harper). Unusually, there's no wild over-reaching here. Rather, we have a suite of songs that drift quite smartly along that stretch of road clearly marked "credible mainstream". nickmulvey.com Download: Fever to the Form, Cucurucu, Venus, Trellis