Pickpockets sound sits at the end of a songwriting thread that links ’60s coffee house folkies with the Laurel Canyon scene and which runs through the ’90s nu-folk boom and into the modern indie-folk age.
The fact that Beautiful Cynic sounds like it could have been found as one of the more understated moments on a David Gray album or as one of the less windswept tracks on a Damien Rice long-player tells you everything that you need to know about the quality of the work on display here.