Gawd help us, Trev, lighten up a bit. For those that don’t know, Trev Williams acts as a sort of one-man Faringdon music scene (at least since the promising Belarus went south), turning out earnest acoustic laments by the barrel-load. I found his early stuff dull, detecting nothing but sophomoric self-pity, but enjoyed his full-length ‘Guiding Star’ record, mostly for its subtle arrangements and excellent vocal harmonies

Sadly, for this demo, Williams has junked all that, preferring to fly solo, with pretty insipid results. ‘Do you know me?’ at least shows Trev in good voice, displaying the acuity of a young Cat Stevens, but the tune itself is nothing but the usual compendium of sad-sack singer-songwriter commonplaces.The level doesn’t improve with ‘Hide and Seek’, a short minor-key dirge, which nevertheless feels too long.

Even Williams’ strong vocal ability is defeated by the truly awful piano ballad, ‘Honey trap’, during which he sounds like his nuts are being periodically scraped with a cheesegrater, and the tune ends with a desultory blues solo. Huey Smith he ain’t.

It may be a bit rough to diss these songs too much, given they are clearly very rough demos, and Williams’ strengths as an arranger haven’t been brought to bear on them yet. Still, even making allowances, the tunes seem far inferior to his ‘Girlfriend’, ‘I did it for you’ and others. Perhaps he is more concerned with his group, The Follys. But I would nonetheless be worried about the lack of maturity in the lyrics and the musical predictability. Williams, like Chris Martin, seems a man with nothing interesting to say, but compelled to write songs in any case. This is the sound of a potentially decent singer-songwriter treading water.