Occam’s Razor  –  Matt Saxton (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I’m always going to be a sucker for a song which mixes medieval philosophical principles with jaunty contemporary music, I can’t be the only one, I like my academia but I like it groovy. And that is just what Matt Saxton delivers with Occam’s Razor, a kooky little acoustic-pop number which delves into the idea of mid-life crisis and does so by way of some name dropping. But this is name dropping with a difference. No Z list celebrity references or glitterati glamourising, here the clever and the cool are the likes of Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre as well as the titular Occam.

It’s a lilting little number which shuffles and grooves its way through an acoustic pop-rock landscape, but is essentially about delivering the message rather than any outlandish musical adventures. That said the song is dressed with some lovely musical detail and motifs, electric guitars meander about in the middle distance and the beat keeps things bouncy and buoyant. With a full album following along very soon, Matt Saxton is certainly an artist to keep an eye on, not just for the clever references and pseudo academia that beats at its heart. At a time when music is struggling to rise above a certain lowest common denominator, it is nice to find someone who thinks about outside the box.