the debut album ‘Second Season’ from Australian singer-songwriter James Cooper, which in its effortless melodic lines, classic harmonies and old-style pop format has the indelible stamp of the "old approach". The stand out tracks - the rollicking opener ‘Everything To Everyone’, the gentle, pretty, train-inspired ballad ‘Beautiful As You’, and the brassy ‘Save Me From Love’ - over which one just imagine George Martin and a horn section salivating - display a subtle mastery of art of gradually building the listener"s expectations, satisfying them, taking the levels down again only to let them ring out again in a lusty, final wash. And yet there are breaks from the formula, too: the sombre yet stirring piano ballad ‘Sammy’ - much more sparsely produced than the rest of the album, with sensitive guitar and cello flourishes on top of the insistent, melancholy piano chords; the thumping bass tones of ‘Christine’, and the gentle lullaby ‘Really Miss You’, which provides a delightful closer. Sometimes the album seems to live in the shadow of what you might call the Franz Ferdin-isation of vocals, meaning that its shinily sung lines and third part harmony accompaniment sometimes seem a bit risk-averse. It will also benefit from a more full production and better-equipped studio at some point. But that will surely come. For this moment listeners should take very seriously Cooper"s exhortation to "try falling in love in London" - his current home - because it, or something similar, is just what the residents of his adopted city may be doing as he starts to gig there more often. Would Sound Good on A Mix Tape with: Fountains of Wayne, Paul McCartney & Wings, The Thrills, The Posies, Matthew Sweet, Bobby Sutliff, the dB"s