Black Star Riders

★★★★ Another State Of Grace NUCLEAR BLAST. CD/DL/LP Thin Lizzy’s after-life band’s superior fourth set. Black Star Riders’ latest arrives just after their linchpins, frontman Ricky Warwick and guitarist Scott Gorham, played festival dates as Thin Lizzy. But the pair’s day-job group goes from strength to strength. There’s been a cabinet reshuffle since 2017’s Heavy Fire, with the notable departure of guitarist/ co-writer Damon Johnson, and there’s a more melodic, even poppier edge to some of these songs. Tonight The Moonlight Let Me Down arrives in a rush of jousting guitars and nagging choruses; the title track’s nod to Northern Ireland (“They call it the Troubles/’Cos it wasn’t quite a war”) fuses Lizzy’s Gaelic anthem Emerald with The Pogues, while What Will It Take? pairs Warwick’s growl with female backing vocals. Maybe the line-up change has lit a fire under them, but this is Black Star Riders’ best work yet. Mark Blake