Three Months Three Weeks & Two Days

Bill Pritchard's third album, produced by old school French popster Etienne Daho, is the album that cemented his European popularity, to the point that the British-born singer/songwriter eventually settled in Paris. Sounding like the best album the Go-Betweens never made (Pritchard's voice has a startling resemblance to Robert Forster's), or a collaboration between Lloyd Cole and Prefab Sprout, Three Months, Three Weeks, & Two Days is a low-key, largely acoustic album of smart and sophisticated pop songs with winsome lyrics, pretty melodies, and memorable choruses. The richly textured "Tommy and Co," a minor college radio hit in the States featuring backing vocals by Francoise Hardy, and the haunting, nearly solo "We Were Lovers" are the highlights on this brief album, but all ten tracks are warm and evocative. Pritchard's mellifluous voice is up front in the arrangements, and Daho wisely avoids any sort of flashiness in the production. This album is an underappreciated gem that's begging for a cult following. ~ Stewart Mason