Hayden Thorpe

Former Wild Beast takes a cosmic trip on second solo long-player.

With 2019’s piano-driven solo debut Diviner, Hayden Thorpe stripped out some of the floridity that defined his defunct band Wild Beasts. Moondust For My Diamond, recorded after the singer’s return to his Lake District home, allows that impulse towards grandeur back in slightly altered form, its rich synthscapes and expansive lyrics suggesting many nights spent lying under the stars, plotting co-ordinates in time and space. “Within this skin/I am boundless,” sings Thorpe over the luscious, languid beats of No Such Thing, while Golden Ratio and Supersensual, for all their sonic pleasures, have the overripe air of a rather hands-on selfactualisation workshop. Yet with the pixelated Avalon of The Universe Is Always Right, Rational Heartache’s seductive techno twitch or Metafeeling’s repurposed Scritti Politti gloss, Moondust For My Diamond stays the right kind of precious.