Last Night Watchman makes big ideas feel brilliantly personal on new EP 'Old Blighty'

'Old Blighty' is the kind of EP that reminds you just how wide songwriting can be when someone stops worrying about conventional subject matter. Colonial history, ancient footprints, mortality, memory and the slow movement of time all find their way into Last Night Watchman’s world, and somehow the whole thing feels remarkably cohesive.

There's a real spark to the way these songs turn unusual ideas into something immediate. The title-track, inspired by the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol, tackles Britain’s colonial past with ambition and a clear sense of purpose, while ‘Footprints’ takes the discovery of 900,000-year-old human traces in a Norfolk riverbed and turns it into a meditation on just how brief our own lives are against the scale of geological time.

And it's that willingness to think expansively gives 'Old Blighty' its character. It's full of curiosity, history and reflection, but it never becomes dry or academic.

The music is equally adventurous. Recorded in a small home studio in Herefordshire, the songs layer guitars, vocals, banjo, ukulele, keyboards and orchestral textures into arrangements that feel rich without losing their handmade personality. Multiple vocal takes add a choral lift in places, while long-time friend and former Noseflutes bandmate John Horton, aka Sven Vortex, brings lead guitar and keyboard work to both ‘Old Blighty’ and closing track ‘Towards The Sun’.

After years away from recording, Last Night Watchman sounds newly energised by the freedom of working at his own pace, and there's a palpable sense of discovery running throughout the EP.

Neil Young, Paul Simon, and David Bowie may provide useful reference points for the breadth of ambition, but 'Old Blighty' ultimately feels wonderfully personal.

Thoughtful, inventive and bursting with ideas, this is a hugely engaging return from a songwriter who seems determined to prove that absolutely anything can become a song if you look at it from the right angle.