Hand Built by Robots
by Newton Faulkner

I can't decide if I hate or love talented people. On one hand they are living proof that life is unfair and that no matter how hard you try, you can only be this mediocre. On the other hand, some of them write songs like "Dream Catch Me".

Released last year, Hand Built by Robots is the Debut album of 24 year old Newton Faulkner, a scraggy looking, dreadlocks-wearing acoustic guitar-playing, singer-songwriter from Surrey, England. Comparisons to Jack Johnson are inevitable (the acoustic-guitar singer-song writer, not the dreadlocks), however, while Faulkner plays cheerful campfire songs with a definite virtuosity, he thankfully doesn't evoke images of the surf culture that Johnson does. His songs while simple, are pretty intense as shown by a stripped down cover of Massive Attack's 'Teardrops' and first single 'I Need Something'.

The album has 17 tracks, while it's hard to defend that many songs, "Robot" somehow pulls it off, I can't point out any specific songs to cut just on the fact that the bite sized pop ditties fit together rather nicely. Some of the songs could have had an extended timing, but he doesn't cheapen it by repeating a verse and chorus to hit the 3 min mark. Faulkner does experiment on a couple of tracks like pseudo-Indian 'Sitar-Y Thing' and Crowded House-Y 'Straight Towards the Sun'.

While guitar virtuosos seem to pop out like mushrooms after a rain nowadays, Faulkner manages to bring something different to the table, a touching, cheerful album definitely worth taking a listen to.