SHORE THINGS

JAMES WALSH IS not your regular pop hero. Soft-spoken and considered in his speech, he's teetotal and prefers to spend time with his baby daughter and girlfriend than tour the world with his band, Starsailor. He's as unlikely to be found throwing a TV from a hotel window as his earnest dad-rock band is to be found playing the sort of cod-metal that current Brit favourites The Darkness have made their stock in trade.

For that reason, it's surprising that Starsailor have managed to still find a place in the British charts.

When they first appeared two years ago with their melancholy debut, Love Is Here, they were cruising on the tidal wave of an acoustic revival in Britain that had been spearheaded by the likes of Badly Drawn Boy and Turin Brakes. It sold more than a million copies, but a lot has changed since then. Besides The Darkness, the British rock scene has been invaded by emaciated Americans playing the sort of stripped-down tunes reminiscent of the spiky New Wave bands who pre-date the lush sounds of Walsh's combo by about 20 years. There isn't much introversion on the charts these days.

Nonetheless Walsh and Starsailor are back with Silence Is Easy, another slew of songs that sway between introspective indie and soft pop. And this week they bring that sound to Hong Kong for the first time with a gig at Wan Chai's old exhibition centre.

This time around there is no 'new acoustic movement' to propel them and no zeitgeist to frame their achievements. Any success is all down to them.

'I think we had a confidence in these songs that meant we could just put them out,' says Walsh from his home in Britain, where Silence Is Easy was released to mediocre critical response but great commercial success, climbing into the top 10 album charts.