Ezio Lunedei and Mark 'Booga' Fowell are the core members of Ezio and hold the honour having Cancel Today picked by Tony Blair to feature on his Desert Island Discs. Despite claims at the time that Blair’s choice had been chosen by Labour Party spin doctors to make him more popular in selecting a back catalogue of middle of the road artists, for a band like Ezio you just can’t buy publicity like that. However, that was back in 1996; before Blair became Prime Minister; and for anyone listening to the tranquil tones of Cancel Today then for all Ezio haven’t turned into a metal act, there is something a lot punchier about their latest album This is the Day.

A Small Dream is a pleasant acoustic guitar opening, with the soft piano chord whilst Ezio’s vocals are evocative of Don McLean. This is music stripped back to a basic structure and works so well on other tracks such as the title track This is the Day.

However, by comparison Bad Bad Place rocks like it has been dressed in cowboy boots, but told to wear dark glasses, in a blues/country and western fusion; it is joyously up beat. Supermarkets sounds like it could have been recorded by David Gray and that’s not a criticism, it is just the best way of describing both Ezio’s vocals and how the band (Lars Plogschties and Marcus Praed provide drums and bass) add richness to the overall narrative.

Bruce Springsteen is the outstanding track on This is the Day, with an unsurprising stylised nod to ‘The Boss’ himself. The track doesn’t take itself serious with wonderfully crafted lyrical moments such as "David Gray said I was like him, And Booga looked like a sumo wrestler, Well at the time that really pissed me off, And now I wish you could have heard him", which off the back of Supermarkets is enough to make a huge grin spread across your face. Even the rhyming of Whittlesey (a market town in Cambridgeshire) with New Jersey is inspired and demonstrates Ezio’s talent for amusing wordplay as an effort to impress a girl, is probably something many have tried and failed to achieve.

Despite the amusing scrapes that can be dreamt of, when one is intoxicated on alcohol, Bicycle has more depth, with the feeling that being dunk on a freewheeling bicycle is pure escapism; with the use of cello drawing some of those sadder feelings to what might seem a humorous activity.

The album ends with the heartfelt I Still Want You, the inclusion of an organ creating a haunting painful end to the album. Alfred Lord Tennyson is credited with the famous phrase, "tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all", yet Ezio shares the other side of that pain, when someone we love causes pain and yet we still want them, it is a sobering thought to end such a fine album.

Reviewed by Jimbo Walsh.

This is the Day by Ezio is available now as a CD/download from Amazon.