Had Tom Waits devoured the pages of Marcel Proust rather than Charles Bukowski, chances are he'd sound not unlike The Bathers' main man Chris Thomson. Formerly a member of Glasgow's esteemed Friends Again, Chris Thomson's first The Bathers LP, Unusual Places To Die, came out in 1987, its bookish Gallic romanticism brilliantly crafted into exquisite confessional pop. Sweet Deceit is more overwrought still, piano trembling with pathos throughout and Thomson now possessing the sort of 40-untipped-Gauloises-a-day voice one might find forlornly gargling a Cognac or three in the after-hours bar scene of some existentially torrid French film. This time round, however, the songs as individual entities cannot bear such a weight of heart-rending atmospherics. Rather, one should listen to such steamy numbers as The Pursuit Of An Orchid, Desire Regained and Honeysuckle Rose as variations on a single obsessive theme.

(Reviewed By: Mat Snow, Q-Magazine)