Aqualung (aka Matt Hales) hales from the same land that his most obvious influences do (Radiohead, Coldplay, Stereophonics). Strange and Beautiful is actually the confluence of two separate previously released efforts - 5 songs from his self titled debut and 7 from the follow-up Still Life. Hales career got a tremendous boost when the song "Strange and Beautiful" was used in a British advert for Volkswagen, and to capitalize on his resultant popularity in the UK this amalgam was conceived as a way to best introduce Aqualung to an American audience.

Mostly slow and pensive, these piano-based tunes smack of the compositional style of Jamie Collum - plenty of space and minimalist arrangements where drum machine and guitars play at the outskirts. Hale's strengths lie in his effective use of dynamics and his ability to pull a nice hook melody out of a chorus. Lyrically he focuses primarily on the various loves of his life, and his understated way of evoking the pros and cons of relationships works in a quiet and lovely way.

The biggest knock on the guy that just stares you right in the face and is as inescapable as death and taxes is his vocal impressions of Thom Yorke primarily and Chris Martin to a lesser degree. How big of a liability this is will depend on the individual listener. The biggest problem here, is that along with the uncanny resemblance to the voices of those above-mentioned icons is his unfortunate tendency to borrow their melodies as well.

As for myself, it wasn't so off-putting at first, after all I've liked other acts that have committed the same sort of petty theft (Palo Alto, Remy Zero, Muse to name a few) but as the album wears on into it's latter tracks the problem not only persists but becomes progressively worse. To the point that you'd swear you were listening to out-takes from Kid A. Still and all, there are things that I really found remarkable about Aqualung - his music has an amazing patience and faith in itself. I can't remember the last time I heard a recording that made such effective use of space and silence. And this goes beyond mere spare arrangement, it's almost as though Hale is using silence as an actual instrument. As I listened to it I could almost envision it as white-out, as though he were painting in the silence by hand.

Most of my colleagues have not spoken well of this record and their criticisms are not without merit. It would be fair to dismiss this entire record as blatant plagiarism and leave it at that. While I have to acknowledge this as sound rationale - I find myself inclined to defend it. Fans of artists such as Duncan Sheik, Jamie Collum and of course Radiohead and Coldplay may want to check it out.