Edito de Signal HillReviews Received 4 stars and Best Of Artist rating: "Dakota Suite's Signal Hill is another lo-fi sleeper from San Francisco indie label Badman Recording Company. While the band is from West Yorkshire, England, songwriter Chris Hooson exudes an almost Midwestern feel not unlike that of Josh Rouse or the Red House Painters simple, sparse instrumentation and whispered, intimate vocals tell stories of absent lovers and grey evenings. Produced and recorded by band member Richard Formby (Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom), the album has a distinctly analog feel, with idly strummed acoustic guitar intertwining with soaring lap steel, a simple trap kit, and some of the gentlest bass playing on record. Similar to Spain's Josh Hayden, singer/songwriter Hooson's breathy vocals are warmly bittersweet and heartfelt, never abandoning hope, but rather pleading his case in an almost offhand manner. In the album's closing moments, a cello-led chamber piece serves as an intro to the cautiously hopeful final track "When Skies Are Grey," which finds the singer almost peeking around the skirt of his mother or wife, asking, "Will you hide me/In your broken rooms/Say you will/Say you will." Fans of blushingly sweet, depressing lo-fi pop will find Signal Hill to be another fine album to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes to, sitting in their apartments, blissfully miserable." - ALL MUSIC GUIDE ******************* On the sleevenotes for Dakota Suite's last album proper, 1998's 'Songs For a Barbed Wire Fence', mainman Chris Hooson thanked his wife for saving him from dying. It was no trite remark. Hooson had previously taken to his bed and willed himself to stop living. He had worked in some heavy-duty places - a hospice for terminal alcoholics, among others - and he was left broken. 'Songs...' reflected all that. It was bleak and fragile and chillingly intense. It offered no way round. Now comes the redemption. 'Signal Hill', as before, is still essentially a mood piece and that mood remains resolutely indigo. But the fear of loss and the unknown is now underlined by a tacit belief that the fog is slowly lifting. Of course, there is only so happy Dakota Suite can be; 'Raining Somewhere' with its simple cello, stabbing piano and tolling bell is no picnic. But in tracks like 'I Turned Away So That I May Not See' and album closer 'When Skies Are Grey' producer and former Spacemen 3 associate Richard Formby has teased out a bruised, if sparse, orchestral swell that can't help but lift the spirit. This is not irritating, maudlin, lo-fi nonsense. Dakota Suite are a much rarer, much more truly damaged bird. First, through the fence, and then now up the hill. Dakota Suite are almost there. Why not follow them? 8/10 - Paul McNamee, NME Lire la suite