Album Review: Toby Martin - Songs From Northam Avenue

The distinctive voice of Youth Group changes trains from Sydney's inner west, alighting at Bankstown, to soundtrack a suburb that's a curious mix of old and new Australia.

There's the gentle observations familiar in Toby Martin's work, but the view out the cafe window on Chapel And Dellwood has wafts of the Mediterranean and Indo-Chinese clunking percussion drifting in. Similarly, Spring Feeling is waiting for the spring rolls to arrive, before Martin admits he's "in love with this ordinary world". Occasionally, there's almost Go-Betweens-esque askance views: the boarded-up shops of Minto Mall get a romantic melancholy as surf guitars tumble.

It doesn't all work, but there is a spirit of place of somewhere you might know.