King Creosote – Astronaut Meets Appleman (2016)

I must have found out about King Creosote a couple of years ago when I was doing research to compile my top 10 albums list for 2014. I remember listening to King Creosote's album From Scotland With Love and thinking there was something there, but I wasn't overly convinced by that album. It was only when I was working on my similar top 10 list for 2016 when I came across Astronaut Meets Appleman and I was really positively surprised. Right from the start of the album it was clear that this was the kind of music I liked very much. It has lots of similar elements as much of the alternative and indie rock by singer-songwriters of the early 2000's. There are great melodies in the songs and the sounds range from acoustic to guitar driven indie rock that has been spiced up with some analog synths and rare instruments such as bagpipes. I think this is one of the finest albums in this kind of genre in the recent years.



I only just bought this album quite recently. The CD was in a jewel case which is always a deterrent for me with anything else than 90's albums, which are supposed to come in those kinds of packages, so I ended up buying the vinyl. Fortunately it wasn't too expensive.

Right now when I dogged up the Wikipedia article about King Creosote, I was really surprised to find out that he has released more than 40 albums. So, there's no easy way to get acquainted with his whole career. I do feel like, however, that his best work has been done in the recent years. Many of his early recordings were only released on CD-Rom.

King Creosote has a great indie singing voice with an amazing Scottish accent. It's always a pleasure to hear good music sung with Scottish accent.

The album starts with menacing sounding You Just Want that grows nicely including some strings and AIR-like backing vocals. Melin Wynt uses some brilliant bag pipes. This song also reminds me of some early Radiohead songs. Wake Up to This is more traditional indie rock song. It has this great catchy chorus melody. Peter Rabbit Tea has some beautiful string arrangements, but they are topped with strange baby talk, that I'm not too fond of. Surface is one of the best songs on this album. It has amazing melody and sounds. The spacey synths on this song remind me of Grandaddy, which is always a good thing in my books.

I don't know if this is an official music video or not, but there's a nice animated video of the astronaut in the album cover flying around space and strange objects to the song You Just Want. As many movements in outer space, this video as well, seems like it's in slow motion, which suits this particular song really well. There are some absolutely beautiful string arrangements that work really well for flying around space.

I'm really hoping this wasn't just a one off great album from King Creosote, because I would definitely want to hear some more of this kind of stuff. I also really want to see him live now.

Listen to the album on Spotify.