Birmingham born Fyfe Dangerfield, as his name suggests, knows no fear of the unknown. Having had a dream start from the age of twenty as a classical composer as well as with the experimental art rock of the Guillemots, his work so far has always hit, surprised and conquered. His solo début Fly Yellow Moon, released earlier this year, therefore comes as a bit of an unpleasant surprise. Gone is the unstructured and freestyle experimentalism of his band, gone is the finesse of his classical work; in line with his cover of Billie Joel’s ‘She’s Always A Woman,' which featured on a television advert earlier this year, his solo début mainly contains orchestrated pop, of which ‘Barricades’ and ‘She Needs Me’ are now released as a double A Side single. Unlike his faithful version of Joel’s classic however, Dangerfield’s own pop exercises never fully hit it off. An unexplainable wish to drown in sentimentalism and high pitched voices previously known as the Mika Syndrome simply makes ‘She Needs Me’ an unnecessary item on Fly Yellow Moon. Having been released as a single before, one wonders why this has, once again, been sent to the shops.

‘Barricades’, the other A-side, works out slightly better, but even this song never manages to rise above the average orchestrated pop ballad. Things are not all bad though; the introvert ‘Livewire’ and the poppy ‘When You Walk in the Room’ from the same album show at least a feel for proper pop music, but the songs chosen as singles seem to aim for hit success rather than artistic triumph. Dangerfield never missed the right spot before, but releasing these songs as singles might just be his first.