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When Feeder’s Grant Nicholas released his solo debut Yorktown Heights last year, there was a palpable sense of the (not so) young punk putting away childish things, from the long dark hair and beard to the acoustic guitar.

And his stripped-down approach hit the spot nicely, which may be why he’s followed it up quickly with this six-track mini-album. The backing-vocal hum underpinning the ominous-sounding title track fits a dark tale of how ‘I got fooled by a liar… I won’t be fooled again’. But from that point on, shards of sunlight begin to appear.

Better Days To Come and the harmonica-tinged Reminisce are sweetly lilting acoustica, while After The Fall’s finger-picking contemplation concludes that ‘It won’t get better than this’. It won’t escape fans’ notice, however, that the best track on here, the brooding but anthemic Joan of Arc, was also on Yorktown Heights. So you’re only getting five new tracks and 15 minutes of new music here.

Short and sweet? Sure, but maybe a little too much so./o:p

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.