The sound of British band Me And My Friends immediately evoked memories of Oi Va Voi and Paul Simon at the time of 'Graceland' is never far away either. Whereas Oi Va Voi links poetic pop with the klezmer clarinet of Steve Levi, Me And My Friends prefer to experiment with afrobeat ('Look Up'), Ethio-jazz ('Sometime') and highlife ('You Read My Mind'), and mix those influences with pop and nu-folk ('All Of This I Know'), the parallel with Oi Va Voi being that Sam Murray's clarinet, supplemented with Emma Coleman's cello, is also given a prominent role. In their songs the members of Me And My Friends talk about fairly universal themes like friendship ('Another Lifetime'), dedication ('Promise Me This Much') and nostalgia ('High As The Sun'), but for the reggae flavored 'Good Life', vocalist/guitarist Nick Rasle drew inspiration from the things he heard and saw while working as a volunteer on the island of Lesbos when the refugee crisis was at its peak, making the sang a call for more empathy and understanding in an increasingly intolerant society. Between poetic pop, jazz and world music, and ever fragile and beautiful.