ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Look away, folk purists: Laura Marling has gone full-blown electronica. When she picked up her dad’s cherry-red Gibson 335 on a couple of tracks on Short Movie a couple of years ago, people were shocked she’d discovered a power point. Now she has joined forces with fellow folkster Mike Lindsay from Tunng, mixing her stream-of-consciousness, surrealistinspired lyrics with his swirling electronica soundscapes. The standout track, Curse of the Contemporary, is one of the grooviest electronic pop bass-and-strings backgrounds of the year. And to make it odder, they’ve then created a yeti-like creature called LUMP, through which, they insist, the music manifests itself. LUMP, LUMP (Rhythmethod)