Mike Seed, solo and with the dark folk/experimental folks on The Phantom Carriage, has been putting his isolation and brooding years growing up on the Isle of Man to excellent use, creating haunting, spare, absurd little tunes that often explode on you in a mist of various styles and emotional moods. There is a whimsy beneath the dread that creates a moving, odd, but hopeful world.

The imagery evoked in songs like ?Sleep in My Melody and ?Dear Old Crow? harken back to the Romantic era, with Seed?s ragged voice and the sutble electronica placing him firmly in the present. There is also that ancient, slightly magical realism at work in ?Holy Nightmare? and ?Well, It Won?t.?

For 20 songs, Seed manages to flirt with the traditional and the outrageous, the hidden and the bare-naked. This is a carnivalesque record, with Seed as the laconic barker showing us what is inside each garish little tent, those that just happen to be in and outside of ourselves. 7/10 -- Mike Wood (17 July, 2007)