There's been a sudden and weird upsurge in 'quiet' music this past year or so, an unimposing tidal wave of singer-songwriters brandishing acoustic guitars, vaguely folkish influences and terrifically good manners. The success of Badly Drawn Boy and Coldplay is part of it but, realistically, they're rock'n'roll behemoths in comparison to some of the scene's members.
Take Tram, a band so understated they make Coldplay look like AC/DC. Paul Anderson, an Irishman living in Crouch End, has been pursuing this frail and unabashedly pretty music for a few years now, alongside a motley range of collaborators who've included fellow travellers Broken Dog, PJ Harvey cohort John Parish and Placebo's keyboard player.
Squeezed into the 12-Bar - less an intimate club, more a walk-in closet - Tram currently number four, with drummer Nick Avery now Anderson's co-writer. As songs from their new second album, 'Frequently Asked Questions' (Setanta), unravel at a stunned and cautious pace, it appears Anderson has crafted a UK correlative to the slow-core bands - notably Low and Smog - that've been a source of austere charm in the American underground for a few years now.
Indeed, the excellent 'Now We Can Get On With Our Own Lives' is good enough to be the work of one of that scene's exemplars, Spain, with its subdued jazz shuffle, shrugging strums and general air of mellow resignation. Tram's music is subtler and more complex than that, however. Those US influences are mingled with a few indigenous tricks: the deceptive warmth of Nick Drake, Talk Talk's sparse, dislocated magic.
It all reaches its apotheosis on 'Giving Up', as slow and engaging as ever, but with a richness conjured from scant materials. Anderson, hunched over his acoustic guitar, is a model of hushed anguish, all powerful words softly spoken. There's never a drumstick raised in anger, but enough emotional edge to sustain dozens more bositerous groups. Perhaps even more so than in 2000, it's the quiet ones you've got to watch.
IMAGES: OLLY HEWITT
