On this record, the two members of The Daydream Club create such a mood of quiet intimacy that you almost feel they would be perfectly content to play and sing for each other while the rest of the world goes hang.
The folky UK duo in question are Paula Walker from Redcar and Adam Pickering from Leicestershire. She used to be a professional dancer and toured with the percussion show 'Noise Ensemble' while he is the ex-drummer of pop group Defend Russia.
The percussive connection makes the absence of drums on this record a little surprising. Instead they rely on sweet vocal harmonies with homely acoustic backing. She plays glockenspiel, he plays acoustic guitar, piano, melodica and even tries his hand on the accordion for the one instrumental tune (Fisherman's Tale).
Be With You Always shows they are not above unadorned soppiness ("you're not like any of the others") but thankfully the album is not just a collection of straight love songs.
There's more than a hint of Victorian melodrama in a tale of a husband who strays (The Affair) which ends in blood and tears as the wronged woman "reaches for the knife with a desperate heart".
A recurrent theme is that of life not quite living up to expectations whether it is "chasing a lost dream" on In The Arms Of Another Day) or in the title track which they say is "about losing sight of where you want to be but continuing on blindly regardless".
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The touching Alarms Ring Out addresses the personal impact of the recession ("Looking for a better life - is it much to ask") but the air of wistful nostalgia is laid on too thickly for The Record Shop.
This conjures up a rose-tinted image of drinking coffee and chatting about the weather with an old man in a local shop who reflects sadly "I don't see as many faces as I used to .......he fears the record's lost just like his shop".
Something about this doesn't ring true. I've been in hundreds of record shops in my time and never come across a single one run by a lonely old man, let alone one who serves up vinyl and coffee. And even if this is a real memory, it begs the question as to why are they talking about the weather in a record shop!
The thirteen songs on this album are very English in the way everything is so gently melodic and studiously understated. There is sadness over the way things have a habit of changing for the worst but the mood of passive, fatalism made me yearn for a bit more fire in the soul.
The Daydream Club on Myspace
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