It’s a horrendous cliché to harp on about how music is of a season – ‘this is summertime pop music'; ‘this music has a wintery chill to it'; and so on. But hell, I’m going to do it anyway. This debut release from Adam Barnes has a late autumnal feel. It’s clear and crisp like the onset of a cold November, and warm around the edges like it’s kitted out in a gold-coloured scarf. Ridiculous abuse of words aside, let me put that in a more utilitarian form: I like these songs. They’re good. They’re well written, well played and well recorded.

There are six songs on ‘Blisters’, each revolving around Barnes’ strong, pushed-to-the-fore voice, which is simultaneously delicate and confident, without ever creeping into that artificially cracked/tortured artist styling that can rarely sound anything but forced. Alongside the vocals, which somewhat recall the recent ‘indie-folk’ tradition of outfits like Fleet Foxes or, more locally, Stornoway, there’s a rich texture of sound going on. Acoustic guitar gives way to piano and keyboard melodies, which are often filled out with a fuller line-up including bass and drums, always making sure to work around the vocals, rather than attempting to swamp them. Structurally, the songs are traditional, but with enough variety of tempo and instrumentation to maintain interest. There’s a real understanding of what works here.

Barnes was previously the man behind Motion In Colour, and he was described on this website as “the finished product,” before receiving a swift kick in the songwriters’ essentials from good ol’ Slasher MacKinnon. “The song is largely wafty, sentimental claptrap,” MacKinnon wrote of a track on Motion In Colour’s demo, but I’d find it hard to level such criticism at these songs. They’re not setting the world aflame with originality or insight, but there’s no reason why they need to. It can be difficult to put songs together that manage this kind of delicate simplicity, and on the basis of these six, Adam Barnes won’t have problems adding more to this already impressive output.