SOUND NT JUDGEME

THE LATEST ALBUM RELEASES RATED AND REVIEWED

FUTURE DUST THE AMAZONS ★★★★ ★

THE perfect follow-up to their 2017 debut album, Future Dust is the Reading rockers’ second chance to prove their worth as a legitimate group worthy of any festival stage. Lead singer Matt Thomson and his band-mates were aiming for a heavier sound and they’ve certainly got it.

Right from opening track Mother, with its creeping crawl of an intro that booms into a monstrous song of defiance to the intriguing End Of Wonder, in which they sing about the silent rise of eating disorders, the album is a riff-led, guttural pleasure.

SUDDENLY EVERYONE EXPLODES

PLASTIC MERMAIDS ★★★★★

ISLE of Wight natives Plastic

Mermaids have created a tripped-out psychedelic pop masterpiece that ebbs and flows like the current I fully expect them to ride this year.

It’s also understandable why Wayne Coyne is such a huge proponent of the five-piece, who are, in their own Blue Peter-style, building an effects pedal for the Flaming Lips frontman.

Suddenly Everyone Explodes is on the money from Glow to Luliuli. There isn’t a bad track on the album. So whack it up and tune out from life with this multilayered and faceted group.

STILLWATER FRANKIE LEE ★★★ ★★

AMERICAN singer-songwriter Frankie Lee follows in the footsteps of Bob Dylan with his second album.

Stillwater has an easy going, Nashville Skyline sound, complete with slide guitar and harmonica, but it avoids ever descending into pastiche.

Like his hero, Lee also uses a traditional veneer to disguise darker contemporary themes, his lyrics adding an edge to the sunny arrangements, with (I Don’t Want to Know) John channelling the sort of blue-collar storytelling that marked out early Springsteen, and In the Blue concealing a theme of loss beneath lush piano chords.

The rest of the album never quite matches those two, but it is nevertheless a classy and likeable Country-inflected pop record.