fingerpick

Often starting with a neat, fingerpicked acoustic guitar, he expands his sound to include other instruments like fiddle and hammered dulcimer, electric guitar loops, drones and multi-tracked vocals.

Three brothers: a chemist, his brainpower a tool I admire, uniform a labcoat of brilliant white; a student, spare time filled with the gentle pluck of fingerpicked guitar, silence cut by the soft ring of piano keys; a prospective businessman, dressed in sleek fabric of blue, black, green, soft clothing a cover for the jagged scar on his chest.

And as unlikely as that may sound, it's true: His self-titled LP is a paean to classic rock and its English progeny (Oasis, Blur), built around fingerpicked acoustic guitars, McCartneyesque jangle and lyrics about one-night stands with devilish women.

The softly fingerpicked "Slightly Sober," for example, scratches at the scab of her sobriety: Sleeping on the tube/Mouth wide open, I'm falling into you/ Maybe in the morning we can just pretend nothing ever hap-pened/And do it all again/It feels so nice to forget everything.

Consequently, ditties that revolve around fingerpicked acoustic guitar and gentle dynamics pop out of the mix rather than getting lost in the shuffle.

Angelique Kidjo from Benin sings the tender ballad, Malaika (Angel) to the spare accompaniment of a solo, fingerpicked electric guitar.

Whilst the album has a strongly autobiographical theme - summed up in the song Wasco or the reflective, fingerpicked Giving Back The Best Of Me - there is the up-tempo Wishing Well to provide breadth to the album.

Accompaniment here is instead provided by fingerpicked acoustic guitar and strings in an orchestration by longtime Beatles producer George Martin, who created the show's mash-up soundtrack in collaboration with his son, Giles Martin.

There's a serene calm amplified by tinny fingerpicked guitar and animatronic bird calls.