Turin Brakes - The Optimist LP - 2001

Amazon.co.uk Review
Turin Brakes is the name under which British duo Ollie Knights and Gale Paridjanian have been quietly acquiring a cult following prior to the release of this, their debut album. Though The Optimist is a heavily derivative work–and heavily derivative, at that, of what is becoming a tediously rigid indie orthodoxy defined by Radiohead and Jeff Buckley–it is certainly possible to see what the small amount of fuss has been about. At the very least, The Optimist knocks spots off anything yet accomplished by Coldplay or Travis. Turin Brakes' instrumentation is mostly kept to an ascetic minimum, and it says much for the songs collected here that this is generally all they need. In fact, the only real clunkers are those which try too hard to sound like a proper rock band. Turin Brakes are at their best in their quiet, reflective moments: the opening track, "Feeling Oblivion", is a supremely pretty song, and "State Of Things" is an adroit summoning of the ghost of Bob Dylan circa Freewheelin'. –Andrew Mueller

Track list:
01 - Feeling Oblivion
02 - Underdog (Save Me)
03 - Emergency 72
04 - Future Boy
05 - The Door
06 - State Of Things
07 - By TV Light
08 - Slack
09 - Starship
10 - The Road
11 - Mind Over Money
12 - The Optimist