The Real Tuesday Weld

★★★ Blood ANTIQUE BEAT. DL/LP

First of three swansong albums from louche London troubadour and friends.

The plaything of singerproducer Stephen Coates, The Real Tuesday Weld have been delivering their self-styled ‘cabaret noir’ – marrying old jazz 78s to modern electronics and wry, boho-demimonde lyrics – for over two decades. Now Coates is calling time on the project with a trilogy of valedictory LPs. Pitched in the middle of an outré Venn diagram of Serge Gainsbourg, Momus and Barry Adamson, the first of the trio,

Blood deals in cinematic archness, with Coates and three female guest vocalists sharing its semi-spoken narratives of after-hours nefariousness and elegant disaffection. At its best – the film noir-meets-Weimar oompah of What Happens Next?; Skeletons In Waiting’s gypsy jazz existentialism; the pulsing, male suitor-scorning Promises Promises delivered by Sephine Llo – this is knowing, eloquent if musically anachronistic fare, an impression deepened by a deadpan cover of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face.