A to Z
PETE ASTOR
You Made Me FAUX-LUX
7/10
Easy charm and inspired upcycling on band covers set
Forty years after founding The Loft, Astor maintains a cultish profile with a steady trickle of soulfully downbeat solo records. He’s no stranger to the cover – 2005’s Hal’s Eggs was a set of reworked folk traditionals, and he contributed “Suffering Jukebox” (included here) to last year’s David Berman tribute LP, Approaching Perfection – but You Made Me hits closer to home. Cat Power and Villagers mix it with Gen X, Richard Thompson and more, while Astor revisits his own “Chained To An Idiot”, from 1974. Most impressive is John Martyn’s “Solid Air”, where he and pals ride a Doors-y, psych-blues groove until it’s gently steaming.
SHARON O’CONNELL
BEST COAST
Always Tomorrow CONCORD
6/10 Californian duo crave balance on LP4
If evidence was needed of just how far Best Coast – and specifically singer and guitarist Bethany Cosentino – have grown in the decade since their engagingly messy debut, Crazy For You, it’s a song like “Everything Has Changed”. In it Cosentino, no stranger to the exaggerated peaks and troughs of rock’n’roll life, yearns for simplicity: “Now I’m sipping on my coffee/Now I’m walking a little dog on a leash,” she sings. As always, her lyrics are unambiguous – too on-the-nose for some – but there’s an admirable unfussiness to it all. Like “Seeing Red”, a Paramore-esque pop-punk anthem about anger, regret and starting over.
GREG COCHRANE
BIRTHH
Whoa CAROSELLO
6/10
Neo-soul and dreamy atmospherics brighten up Alice Bisi’s second
Italian singer-songwriter Alice Bisi’s second album is an evolution from her overly melancholic debut. takes a breezy, languid approach, inflected by neo-soul, a hip-hop beat here, a flourish of skittering electronics there. The dreamy sound evokes languid, philosophical summers on the likes of the bittersweet “Parakeets”, a reflection on the death of her grandmother with a seesaw melody, or the airy musing of “Supermarkets”. Most surprising is the jazz’n’bassflavoured “Space Dog”,. It is indeed, but such sweet sounds make existence a little easier.
