MODERN STUDIES

The Weight Of The Sun

RScottish-based “kosmische chorale” group graduate to greatness.

egardless of genre – and they’re so fluid one can’t nail that down – Modern Studies are one of those bands whose warmth and happy/sad sense of romance feels irresistible. They might be akin to contemporary folk, but Pete Harvey’s frisky disco basslines and cameos from peculiar instruments lend them a guile which, like the emotions they engender, can be vintage or neoteric.

Their third album builds on the bubbling brew of 2018’s wonderful Welcome Strangers. The GlasgowLancashire quartet position the twinned voices of Emily Scott and Rob St John atop a bed of rhythms which shift between krautrock, light funk and chamber pop. There’s a dash of Big Big Train in the melancholy they achieve, but fans of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood will also hear the coded call. It’s more about the big sky, the overall canvas, than individual tracks, though the sinewy glide of Run For Cover and psych-groove of Brother (which somehow evokes both Caravan and Curtis Mayfield) are golden rays. There’s a charm within Modern Studies’ DNA which makes them, without fanfare or clamour, one of today’s most mesmerising outfits.