Water Cycle

The Company of Friends Self-released***

There's a good chance you haven't heard of Water Cycle. After all, Aaron Page – the Dubliner behind the naturistic name – is so low-key that he wrote most of his debut album in a garden shed. The Company of Friendshas higher production values than that nugget would suggest, although a certain slipshod charm has been retained throughout the recording process. These nine tracks are a blend of lo-fi electronics, baroque arrangements of string and brass, and straight-up commercial pop-rock. Those fusions admittedly sound forced and clumsy on occasion, but when Page pulls it off (as on the gently dazzling opener, So Bright,and the gurgle, shimmer and bleep of Sparks), he generates flickers of promise of something beyond the boundaries of shed-pop in the future. See breakingtunes.com/watercycle

Download tracks: So Bright, Sparks