Somebody's been listening to Nick Drake. This is the immediate feeling you get whenever you come across one of a plethora of singer/songwriters at the moment. Be it Matthew Sweet, Tom McRae or the Kings of Convenience. The feeling can be repeated here with Ethan Blake. Only this time, you might care to think of the vocal stylings of Greg Lake as well.

Greg Lake? Yes. Greg Lake was one third of the fantastic super group prog-rock giants that were Emerson Lake and Palmer. While there may be no "Jerusalem", "Karn Evil" or the fabulous "Nutrocker" in Blake's cannon, what we do have is "Ode to Balam and Bael".

Up until this point on a listen to his well produced demo, you get a selection of listenable tunes: "Art Deco", a moribund tale of lost love, "New York", which can't work out which Elton John song it wants to be ("Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" vs. "Sorry") and "Blitz Bomb" which is a Gomez style Delta Blues Stomps ("Get Up on the Dance Floor and dance", well, what else would you do?).

But then things go a bit weird with "Ode to Balam and Bael", which is as overblown with its mystical, biblical and mythical references as anything the producers of "Pirates", "Brain Salad Surgery" and an interpretation of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" could ever come up with.

It brings up images of Mediaeval banquets and chivalric fights for fair maidens, particularly with the use of Latin and archaic sounding English "Balam can you hear us Bael maketh noise". Just don't ask me what it's supposed to be about.

To add to the Prog Rock-isms, we also have "Europa", a mysterious sounding piece of guitar playing that, 30 seconds in, will convince you your CD player has gone skip mad. This is less ELP, more Pink Floyd's "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict". Nonsensical voices jabber away over a series of strange and then even stranger noises. Hardly a song, but a triumph for fans of early Floyd.

By far the weakest song is "Fifteen", a song written from the point of view of a boy of that age. It kind of shows. The rhymes are awkward, there are some cringe worthy "woo woos" that would be best left to the professionals (see Gladys Knight and the Pips' "Midnight Train to Georgia") and it is full of immature attempts at maturity. Rather helpfully, the narrator admits: "boy, I feel so insecure", so at least he is aware of his own vulnerability.

It is a shame, because, elsewhere, Ethan Blake does vulnerability quite well. His opening track ("Art Deco") features the lyrics "When you don't have her/you don't have nothing" and "when you're chasing her/there's no turning back" which perfectly sum up the mood of a vulnerable person in love.

Elsewhere, in the above mentioned Elton John pastiche ("New York"), the theme of unhappy relationships comes through insecure theme comes through again: "We used to fight/you talked a real good game" and "memories are all we have/maybe New York is far away now."

Meanwhile, in "Lucien's Star", the unlucky-in-love crooner sighs: "Nobody told you love creates the greatest pain that we can bear". With lines like this, it's clear that Blake is a talented song writer. Let's just hope that "Fifteen" was a brief of a lapse.

10/09/03 - First published on www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire