ALBUM REVIEWS

Everything Everything – Mountainhead

BBC 6 Music favourites Everything Everything have long managed to bridge the gap between high-brow concepts and daytime radio on a series of albums that have breached the top 10 and earned them five Ivor Novello and two Mercury Prize nominations. On album number seven, singer Jonathan Higgs imagines an alternate society in which those at the bottom of society’s ladder are forced to work relentlessly to keep its elite, at the mountain’s peak, elevated. Higgs’s fascination with artificial intelligence is again to the fore, as are concerns about the environment, religion, celebrity worship and capitalism. In songs such as RU Happy?, Cold Reactor and Don’t Ask Me to Beg, they’re combined with melodic nous to keep their place in the brainy pop firmament secure.

Marry Waterson & Adrian Crowley – Cuckoo Storm Review by Duncan Seaman

“Some thoughts sing out, tune in strike sound” sings Marry Waterson in Undear Sphere ,the opening track of this slow-burning collaboration with Irish singer-songwriter Adrian Crowley. She could well be describing the circumstances under which the pair first came into contact, with Crowley sending out a complimentary post on social media about a previous record of Yorkshire-born Waterson’s that triggered her to get in touch. So began a long process of exchanging sound files over the internet before they finally met. The pair have an easy-going way together and songs such as Watching the Starlings and Heavy Wings unfurl at their own pace, swaddled in Crowley’s atmospheric arrangements. Together, they’re a glorious combination.

Dean McPhee – Astral Gold Review by Janne Oinonen

Dean McPhee is a solo guitarist from Bradford who adheres neither to the earthy, blues and folk-rooted solo guitar tradition exemplified in the UK by the late, great Michael Chapman or the more psychedelically sprawling explorations of, say, Cian Nugent or Chris Forsyth. Instead, Astral Gold nods towards the echoplex adventures of peak John Martyn, with a sizable side order of the “kosmische” intent of Popol Vuh and Ash Ra Tempel. Utilising delay pedals and tape loops, McPhee builds minimalist, spacious symphonies for a solitary Fender Telecaster by layering motifs, riffs and soaring melodies that accrue a haunting intricacy. The spellbinding results have more in common with the detail-orientated depth of dub or gradually evolving forward-momentum of electronic music.

Caravan Palace – Gangbusters Melody Club Review by Andrew Steel

The world has dramatically changed since electro-jazz cult favourites Caravan Palace last ventured across the English Channel with a new record. Their fifth album arrives in the shadow of a pandemic, almost a step out of time; then again, perhaps it is better late than never for their strain of synth-swing and cabaret catharsis, which reaches new levels of potent dancefloor thrills in the red-velvet vein this time around. Opener MAD sashays to and fro with delightfully retrofuturist flavours, while the excellent Mirrors locks into a groove that borders on criminally irresistible. Though the smoky float of Portobello comes and goes too soon, this collage of techno flourishes and slow-dance horns offers classicism and ambition hand in hand.