Album Review: Down Like Gold by Champs

The Isle Of Wight’s a funny old place. In its heyday, it sported delightfully thriving seaside resorts, bustling with grockles. That was an age ago. Now, riddled with economic woes and below-par education services, it’s a deeply conservative, woefully poor and rather isolated rock. These days ….

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Joyous. I’m not sure what word to start with when it comes to Down Like Gold, other than joyous. Brothers Michael and David Champion have harnessed so much wrath on their debut record, taming it into a modest folk swell, there’s nothing but an absolute admission to one’s undeniable joy when hearing it’s compound beauty. Few artists get close to the understated simplistic perfection of Neil Young, but Champs, scribbling both the poetic verse and landscape reverse of a postcard to a vintage idea of love, can do just that.

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Down Like Gold is the 2014 debut album from Britain's Champs. Recorded on the duo's home of the Isle of Wight at Studio Humbug, an old Victorian-era water tower-turned-recording studio, Down Like Gold showcases the duo's harmony-laden, folk, and indie pop sound. Included is the single "Savannah.".

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Brothers Peter and Michael Champion, aka Champs have missed a trick by releasing their debut album as winter tips its hat and bids adiu: Down Like Gold is stuffed with the twinkling warmth of a Christmas record. Sure there’s not a red-red-robin to be found anywhere, bob-bob-bobbing or not, but there’s a definite December spirit floating over the whole thing. ‘Too Bright To Shine’ has some of the quiet grandeur of Frankie’s ‘The Power of Love’, a wonderfully low-key opening sounding at once sad and oddly majestic, like a once-posh seaside hotel left abandoned for a few seasons, while ‘Pretty Much (Since Last November)’ begins with a blanket of male choral voices, wrapping you in lovely christmassy warmth.

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