Whites previous album, The Maximalist, earned itself many plaudits from across the music-press, but little in the way of beneficial or financial reward creatively it stretched beyond the simple realms of psychedelia or sounding like another Electric Soft Parade album (Whites usual musical day-job).
For this, his third album, all other instruments have been eschewed in favour of an intimate delivery of just vocals, acoustic guitar and songs about relationships ending and comparables with sunnier climes (and possibly Brighton, his home-town). The song-titles twinkle with a heady and exotic promise Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls, That Heavy Sunshine Sound, King of the Kingdom yet the overall effect is detachment and, to be honest, a little one-dimensional. One man and a guitar cant do much more than sing and strum and, although White is good enough at both, there isnt a huge amount within this 30 minutes to suggest hes done anything more than get something of his (heartbroken) chest.
Still Yalla!, an Egyptian term which translates as Lets go!, does have its moments, even if the title belies the audible truth. The album is bookended by two rather poetic and idyllic little songs in All The Fallen Leaves and the sprawling sad-fest, The English Sargasso. The latter has a simple motif that befits sleeping on a sea-drenched shoreline on a summers day and is quite simply, beautiful. In between this pairing, the songs veer from the pastoral and hopeful (Ill See Her Again) to the downright repetitive (Lungful of Air) and, with a total running time of just over half-an-hour, the whole experience drifts past without too much effort required from the listener.