Thomas White first came to prominence as a teenager when he and his brother Alex as Electric Soft Paradise were nominated for the 2002 Mercury Prize with their debut album ‘Holes in the Wall’.

White’s new solo album The Maximalist showcases the Brighton’s dude’s range of musical and artistic sensibilities acquired from a decade in the business. It’s a real mixture of styles producing a free flowing imaginative and harmonious album.

The short but aptly named ‘Introducing the band’ is a nice signature tune that sets up the album proper. ‘Jerusalem Thorn’ starts of spacey but brings in a big band/cabaret instrumental which with the lyrics give it a gentle yet sneering mournful vibe.

‘The Last Blast’ is a frenetic energetic track again nicely fusing a big band/cabaret element giving it a grandiose flavour with some nice poignant lyrics and a funky drum roll.

‘Moonlight and Snow’ begins as a slushy sounding soft rock track but then it shows the first sign of a little White freestyling as it morphs into subtle nuances that you don’t really know where it’s going next before it moves into dance beat territory before ending up as it started. It sounds like White having fun and flexing his artistic dexterity.

‘The Weekend’ again is a grand sounding instrumental that takes you on a trip where you’re not quite sure where you’ll end up. Good stuff.

‘The Devil’ mixes hippy flower power with Pink Floyd like rifts attached.

In his own words White has said that defining ‘influences is a waste of time’ citing Mama Cass ‘best to make your own kind of music’. He seems to have certainly done that with this album.

Music by numbers it is not, an inventive, hugely enjoyable and serious album is what it is.