Lionlimb ★★★★ Spiral Groove

BAYONET. DL/LP/MC

Angel Olsen’s bandmates’ second album of irresistibly forlorn yacht rock.

Nashville guitarist Stewart ‘Lionlimb’ Bronaugh abandoned music early on to work as a labourer. Drug addiction is part of Bronaugh’s backstory, but he turned things around after meeting drummer Joshua Jaeger and both found work backing Angel Olsen and resuscitating Lionlimb as a duo. Like Olsen, they favour ’80s synths and lush sound laced with uneasy tension for their own haunted blend of AOR, soft rock and white soul. That tension derives from the way Bronaugh’s pale vocal (shades of Elliott Smith here) can sound detached from, or lost inside, the music’s richly cushioned folds. The title

Spiral Groove gives little away, but Bronaugh’s lyrics reveal a set of love songs full of vulnerability and regret but also hope. A gliding Everyday says it best: “I’m fallin’ down to your floor/But I’m not afraid any more.”