Isaac Roux - Troubled Waters (2024) Hi-Res

Louis De Roo is a Belgian graduate of LIPA up in Liverpool; famous alumni/ae include Americana act Alyssa Bonagura, dance producer SG Lewis, Murph from The Wombats, singer/songwriter Dan Croll and broadcaster and composer Hannah Peel.

In the guise of Isaac Roux, De Roo plays every note of his debut album “Troubled Waters”. He has certainly been listening to the kind of acts bigged up by Pitchfork in about 2009, like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, and he has an ear for a melody and for what works commercially. He’s even put the album out in November, where daylight hours are brief and the Christmas lights cannot dispel SAD.

Opening track ‘Brotherhood’ sounds like Simon Neil from Biffy Clyro singing over a Snow Patrol demo, while ‘Autumn Love’ uses the trick of multitracking the vocals over acoustic guitar to set a lyric about “closure forever”.

‘Golden’ wakes up halfway through by adding an electric guitar on top of a superb acoustic arrangement, a dynamic shift that obeys the indie-rock rule of being quiet then loud. ‘Colours’ (“wrap your little arms around mine”) plays with keys and modalities effectively to give it musical colour, and when the drums come in after the first chorus, the clouds part and the sun pours in. ‘U&I’ or ‘Soaking Skin’ might well end up being synched to some Netflix romcom or American indie movie, such are the beneath-the-covers sound of both songs.

The album’s second side begins with ‘Reflections’, which has an electronic pulse running underneath it and conveys an impressive mood to match the swoop De Roo gives his voice, again a pleasant surprise. ‘The Right Place’ has the kind of chorus Ben Howard used to write when he could be bothered, and it’ll be the highlight of De Roo’s live set.

Closing track ‘When It Storms’ unfurls itself across six minutes. The nylon-stringed acoustic guitar can only cause the listener to think of Jose Gonzalez, in whose lineage De Roo clearly is. It would be unfair to spoil what happens at about 3:30 into the track, then again at 4:35, but the sun comes out again and both moments are very cathartic.

This is a very good debut album full of moods, textures and, most importantly, melodies.