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Before he became St Thomas, Thomas Hansen worked as a postman in Norway while playing in a band called Emily Lang. This might hint at an amorphous personality, but Hansen has stuck at the St Thomas role long enough to get as far as this fourth album.
Feted by the likes of Lambchop and Giant Sand, Hansen concocts a primitive, homemade folk-rock, and the Neil Young comparisons that have dogged him should be banished by the sheer esotericism of this new collection. Though there are glimpses of country or bluegrass, the music sounds idiosyncratically Norwegian, not least the naive and unvarnished Waltzing Around Insane.
Because Hansen makes most of the noises himself – primitive guitars, crude harmonies, piano, melodica – and records them inside what sounds like a small, airless broom cupboard, the disc has the unhinged feel of a Brian Wilson or a Syd Barrett album. It’s charming, weird and grating in equal doses.