TRACK REVIEW: Amateur Ornithologist – Hermit Phase

You can’t help but smile from the very start of Daniel Clifford’s new track. There’s a touch of The Monkees in its blissful rise and fall, warmth and ever-forwardness, as it carries you along like a carousel with more bounce and a definite destination.

When the world gets too much, sometimes the only sense of comfort or sanity that can be found is by briefly burying your head in the sand, and this is the ode to it. It’s like looking at a cereal box while on drugs that are being kind to you: “Start a brand new day / Cobweb blown away /Deal with my malaise / In my hermit phase”, Clifford sings, and you can almost picture the chorus of cartoon cockerels helping to deliver the message.