SOUND JUDGEMENT

The latest album releases reviewed

EL MAGNIFICO

Ed Harcourt ★★★★☆

This is a classic Ed Harcourt album, in the vein of 2010’s Lustre.

The Londoner is known primarily for his husky-voiced, richly-instrumented melodic fare with Ghost Ship, Strange Beauty and Into The Arms Of Your Enemy falling into that bracket, while At The Dead Of The World, a gorgeous duet with Stevie Parker, elevates that approach to rare heights.

Harcourt ups the pace with the driving Deathless and switches to Spanish lyrics on the closing title track.

Broken Keys, featuring Kathryn Williams and Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli, is an early standout, while the slowburning ballad Seraphina ensures the quality remains undiluted to the album’s end.

MOTHER

LOGIC1000 ★★★☆☆

Logic1000 - Australian-born DJ Samantha

Poulter - is carving out a space within the electronic scene with her debut album Mother, a nod to becoming a parent.

Promises’ piano riff turns the track from dance music into house with a disco edge and the addition of Rochelle Jordan’s smooth-as-honey vocals hooks you in. It is the same with Self To Blame - electronica featuring a bouncy beat and vocals courtesy of Kayla Blackmon.

Berlin-based Poulter knows her way around house music and how to craft a cracking electronic anthem or dancefloor filler.

INTERPLAY

Ride ★★★★☆

Shoegaze pioneers Ride are back at a time of renewed interest in the genre with a wave of new bands like Whitelands.

But Ride always disassociated themselves from the term and Interplay is a varied seventh album. Last Frontier is reminiscent of New Order, with its prominent bass, and Last Night I Went Somewhere To Dream is as steeped in 1960s psychedelia as the title suggests.

Final track Yesterday Is Just A Song sees Gardener reflecting “what’s in the past is gone” and, after 34 years, Interplay shows Ride still moving forwards.