Butcher The Bar: Sleep At Your Own Speed

Butcher The Bar
Sleep At Your Own Speed
Morr Music [2008]









Fire Note Says: A debut worth checking out for anytime of the day!

Album Review:
Butcher The Bar is really Manchester’s Joel Nicholson and his guitar. He falls into that special category of the singer / songwriter genre that is right out of the Elliott Smith playbook and on his debut record Sleep At Your Own Speed he would make Smith proud. Nicholson’s softly spoken vocals have a fragility to them that keeps the listener hanging onto every lyric and each strum of his guitar is precisely placed allowing a pace that never drags. Sleep At Your Own Speed is a coming-of-age record for the 22 year old that consists of thirteen short stories which listeners can relate to, such as proclaiming his sadness to a city that has changed for the worse over time in “Getaway”, or changing his scenery if everything feels alright in “Leaving This Town”. Butcher The Bar’s debut is a refreshing album of delicate and mostly acoustic pop gems that will have you going for the repeat button every time, not to mention it's an album that will fit nicely into any shuffle playlist you can create at any moment in time.

Key Tracks: "Sex Szene", "Ball Point Skin Notes", "Leave This Town"

Leave This Town (mp3)

Bands With Similar Fire:
Elliott Smith
Sufjan Stevens
Ben Gibbard

Butcher The Bar MySpace
Morr Music

-Reviewed by Christopher Anthony