Stephen Fretwell CD Review
Stephen Fretwell
Magpie
(Fiction/Interscope)
Delicate Brit singer-songwriter sounds more South Jersey than Southampton (or hometown Scunthorpe).
Stephen Fretwell’s surname is a misnomer; he doesn’t fret well at all. He disguises his poor behavior behind the sad-sack frown that served Nick Drake’s estate so well, and what he lacks in poetry he makes up for in straightshooting (“I’m going away”; “But you fucked up”). Not very skilled on the guitar, musically he’s drawn toward familiarity despite the Abbey Road notches in the liners. He traces Dylan (“What’s That You Say Little Girl”) and Coldplay (“Lost Without You”), but there’s more neither-here-nor-there on his full-length debut than you’d wish. Granted he’s only 23, but a magpie, virtually from birth, is a black-and-white feathered bird. Fretwell’s plummage isn’t so definitive.
6
— Kevin Keegan
