SOUND JUDGEMENT

THE LATEST ALBUM RELEASES RATED AND REVIEWED

MTV UNPLUGGED

LIAM GALLAGHER ★★★ ★★ YOU can thank Noel Gallagher for this glorious recording.

After he used some choice language to describe the city of Hull while on stage in the US, brother Liam pledged to perform at the city’s Grade II listed hall.

What started in spite has gifted fans a snapshot of Liam at his post-Oasis best.

The frontman famously missed Oasis’s MTV Unplugged in 1996 over a “sore throat”, leaving Noel to take on singing duties (and earn plaudits for breathing new life into their songs).

This time around he was ready. His voice in fine fettle, Liam tears through a set of Oasis classics and new material.

On MTV Unplugged, Liam settles an old score, and settles it well.

LOVE, DEATH AND DANCING

JACK GARRATT ★★★ ★★ JACK GARRATT was 24 when, in 2016, he won the Critics’ Choice Award. After releasing his debut album, Phase, he disappeared from the limelight, racked with anxiety and struggling with his sudden graduation to headliner. Luckily, his time in the wilderness has not been in vain. Love, Death And Dancing is a more stripped back, focused affair.

Hooky choruses, reminiscent of Queen, sit alongside glitchy breakdowns and there’s a clear sense of identity here that avoids the modish eclecticism of his debut.

TO LIVE IS TO LOVE

JEHNNY BETH ★★★ ★★ AFTER two highly rated albums as singer with Savages – both Mercury Prize nominated – which followed two underrated ones as John and Jehn, not to mention a Gorillaz collaboration, Jehnny Beth finally goes it alone.

First track, I Am, starts with her declaring “I am naked all the time” and rises to a crescendo of tortured synths, Flower is less fractured, simple beats and minimal guitar, and We Will Sin Together is the most conventionally catchy.

Vocals are variously whispered, chanted and screamed but it’s the quieter tracks – minimal piano-led ballads The Rooms and The French Countryside – that impress most.