SOUND JUDGEMENT

THE LATEST ALBUM RELEASES RATED AND REVIEWED

SPIELBERGS

THIS IS NOT THE END ★★★★★ IS this it? Has the rule of electrobedroom pop started to wane? I’d put my money on Norwegian garage band the Spielbergs hoping that’s the case.

It’s been a long time since a new dirty guitar-led band have stuck their heads above the parapet.

This is definitely an album that will speak to the millennial generation. This is a truly eclectic piece of scuzzy mastery that is both as bleak and as bright as our future can be. And anyone that can work McDonald’s into a song title has got to have something going for them!

NINA NESBITT

THE SUN WILL COME UP, THE SEASONS WILL CHANGE ★★★★★ NINA Nesbitt’s second album has been a long time coming, and the effort that’s gone into it shows. The 24-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter’s new record is slickly produced and well-considered.

She’s grown up and progressed musically since her more saccharine, acoustic guitar-filled 2014 debut Peroxide.

Nesbitt possesses an agreeably clean-cut vocal that slips into a dreamy falsetto on the tracks that could be considered cookie-cutter mainstream fodder by the most irksome of music snobs, but she’s cleverly toeing a line between electronic, R&B and ethereal soul, all wrapped up in a poptastic bow.

A notable improvement for this young rising star.

WARD THOMAS

RESTLESS MINDS ★★★★★ WARD Thomas, AKA 24-year-oldtwin sisters Catherine and Lizzy, have taken a page straight out of the Taylor Swift playbook.

After two albums of solid songwriting and cut glass harmonies, their third is a poppier affair.

The biggest indicator of this? Like Swift’s fifth album, 1989, Restless Minds is backed by an army of writers favoured by the big record labels.

Ed Drewitt, the talent behind One Direction’s History and Little Mix’s Black Magic, is on hand. So is Rachel Furner, who’s worked with The Vamps and Craig David.

Restless Minds is a statement of intent.