Picton's new band believe brings beauty to acoustic debut

Cameron Picton, the former bassist of British art-rockers Black Midi, has unveiled his debut album with his new band Believe, a charming and enticing work that showcases his understated vocals and a penchant for melodic storytelling.

A more subtle approach

While Black Midi's maximalist sound often overwhelmed with its cacophony of styles and textures, Believe's eponymous debut takes a more subtle tack. Recorded with a host of left-field and improvisational musicians, including veteran drummer Steve Noble, the album is entirely acoustic, featuring live-sounding recordings of fingerpicked guitar, double bass, piano, and percussion augmented by string arrangements.

The result is an album that feels less distant, less inclined to showboating, and easier to love than Picton's previous work without ever pandering to the listener. It's admirably unbound by standardised song structures, difficult to accurately pigeonhole, and teeming with innovative musical ideas.

From the moment the arrangement turns dissonant on second track 'In the Blink of an Eye', you're reminded that understated is very much a relative term. While Believe takes a more direct lyrical approach than Black Midi, the songs still deal in episodes of strangeness and surprise.

Over the course of its eight minutes, 'Heart of Darkness' moves between a Pentangle-esque blend of folk and jazz, breezy acoustic soft rock, and a sparse, ominous coda of guitar harmonics and unsettling sounds. 'Actress' is filled with sweet melodies in a folk/jazz vein, but also features pregnant pauses, tempo changes, and surges in volume, ending not with a bang but a gradual petering out.

Believe's debut album is a triumph of restraint, showcasing Picton's growth as a songwriter and his ability to craft beautiful, ideas-dense Music without resorting to the sonic chaos of his former band.