SOUND JUDGEMENT

The latest album releases reviewed

FUTURE PAST DURAN DURAN HHHHI

As its name suggests, Future

Past sees Simon

Le Bon and the boys looking both forwards and back.

Just look at the roll call of collaborators: influential indie DJ Erol Alkan, Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, rapper Ivorian Doll and Mark Ronson.

Tonight United is the only misstep on the album, but thankfully the band are in fine fettle elsewhere, toeing the line between their pop leanings and darker, more experimental instincts.

Give It All Up is a dark fantasy with a killer chorus, while the title track is a nostalgic anthem that conjures up images of pastoral England and distant decades.

Of their late career purple patch, it is perhaps their highest point.

THE MYTH OF THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER

BIFFY CLYRO HHHHI

Aside from the likes of understated opener DumDum and the skewed pop of Separate Missions, the album finds Biffy hitting hard and heavy. Recorded rapidly in their rehearsal room, it shows no loss of scale or power with Denier and Errors In The History Of God pushing the epic end of the scale while bizarre closer Slurpy Slurpy Sleep Sleep and the standout Unknown Male 01 top six minutes.

MY MORNING JACKET

MY MORNING JACKET HHHHI

Back in the early noughties, one of the great joys was seeing My Morning Jacket, three guitarists hidden behind flailing long hair creating a wall of sound, topped by Jim James’ fragile voice. Now on their ninth album, the band has moved on a long way from those days.

The Devil’s In The Details, is the album’s centrepiece, a rueful reflection on being an American adolescent. Complex has the heaviest sound, and while Lucky To Be Alive veers too close to novelty, My Morning Jacket are able to draw upon their classic rock influences while always sounding like themselves.