AMG Review of Words & Music

James Christopher Monger
All Music Guide

Amiable English singer/songwriter Matt Hales brought his well-crafted, commercially viable adult alternative rock sound over to the United States in 2005 with Strange and Beautiful, a compilation of material from his two U.K. albums that proved as popular overseas as it did in his homeland. A frequent song contributor to popular television shows and films (#A Lot Like Love, #Gossip Girl, #Scrubs, #Grey's Anatomy, #One Tree Hill), Aqualung's latest offering falls in the same lush, midtempo camp as Keane and Coldplay, while retaining enough self-effacing humor and warmth to avoid the two aforementioned group's penchant for banal pretense. Nearly all of the material on Words & Music operates in the same theater of midtempo balladry that one would expect from an artist who consistently winds up in films like #Wicker Park, but like Rufus Wainwright or Scandinavian crooner Sondre Lerch, there's a lightness to songs like "When I Finally Get My Own Place," "7 Keys," and "Good Goodnight" that keeps the proceedings palatable, even as they're disappearing out of the other ear.