If twinkly yet doleful opening number Lighthouse may initially signal a return to territories frequently chartered it soon crashes against an influence that becomes, within the context of this particular record, all-pervasive. Dusting down the '60s LPs and lustrous trumpets, Ennio Morricone's soundtracking of Sergio Leone's seminal Trilogia del dollaro provides an immutable point of contact that, like l'uomo senza nome, is never far from fore. Employed predominantly as emotive enhancer of climactic denouement (an arguably almost cinematic technique) as on the insouciant bustle of Into Giants or on the dozy, expansive sprawl of Noisy Sunday or the stilted, skeletal limp of the title track it's an oddly obvious manipulation of inspiration and a case of a relative lack of reconfiguration belittling its overall impact. Similarly Morning Sheets is so unmistakably indebted to Sufjan Stevens' Jacksonville in mood, swing and string-led sway that it feels drained of power and emotionally pallid whilst soundtrack-y instrumental The Things You Do, if experimental – or perhaps adventurous – in approach, purely mutes his greatest asset.
For Watson is at his peak – and a vertiginous one it is too – when indulging his vocal chords and enlightening them with plucked violins or sombre washes of piano that roll like coiling tongue: the gusty Blackwind, for instance, comes across as a maelstrom of invigorating frenetics. However it's The Quiet Crowd, perhaps Watson's most intensely affecting recording since The Great Escape, that demonstrates both deftness of touch and understated pomp. Thus a little lamentably, the overriding feeling is that Adventures In Your Own Backyard may well have felt like an exorbitantly more resolute collection had Watson not strayed quite so far from the patch upon which he may most expressively "pee".
