Lianne La Havas
Blood
WHAT do you do when you're 23, your debut album is the UK iTunes Album of the Year, and you've collaborated with Prince? Go on holiday and start writing the second album, if you're Lianne La Havas.
Inspired by her travels to Jamaica, and reconnecting with family, hence the title Blood, the Londoner's second album starts with the haunting Unstoppable, and then develops into Green And Gold, a modern soul number which pays tribute to her parents.
What You Don't Do lifts the album into pop territory, dropping a thumping beat and catchy doo wop-style vocals, while Tokyo is another high point – La Havas's sultry delivery rides its wonderfully catchy soul beat beautifully.
The rest of the album doesn't quite reach the heights of the start. However, there are points of interest with Ghost, a simple guitar-led number, and Wonderful, a sweet ballad with lashings of trip hop. Now 25, La Havas dodges the curse of the sophomore album by giving fans more of the same, with a little experimentation.
FOUR STARS
Sui Weng Yu
The Maccabees
Marks To Prove It
THREE years on from the Mercury-nominated Given To The Wild, The Maccabees' latest offering, Marks To Prove It, provides a real departure from that almost hyper-active sound.
There is a more intense, reflective sound throughout the 11-track collection – so much so that at times it can be a hard listen. Slow Sun and Pioneering Systems are particularly sombre numbers, piano-led with desolate vocals by Orlando Weeks.
There are moments to remember in title track Marks To Prove It and Something Like Happiness, both of which provide chest-thumping, arm-raising epicness while the chorus on Kamakura sneaks up on and smacks you round the face with its powerful and dark melody, leaving you wanting more.
THREE STARS
Jonathan Veal
Various
The Diary of a Teenage Girl Official Soundtrack
LIVELY, emotional, angsty, rebellious and moody are words often used to describe the typical teenager, so it's appropriate that they come to mind when listening to this album.
The soundtrack to the newly released film, starring Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgard and Bel Powley, is a colourful selection of great songs that are either instantly likeable or at least striking in some way, especially due to many of them being from a musical era a world away from what most teenagers are listening to today.
The Rose Garden's Next Plane To London conjures up all the butterflies teenage dreams bring with its hopeful and uplifting chorus, while Heart's Dreamboat Annie has a lovely nostalgic vibe.
And if it's a classic rock sound you're in the mood for, Mott The Hoople's Roll Away The Stone IS a stomping anthem, while Frankie Miller's A Fool In Love was made for a dancefloor full of teens. This is an album for anyone anywhere who was ever a teenager – whether it was 1977 or 2015.
FOUR STARS
Catherine Wylie
Malpas
Rain River Sea
MALPAS is a collaboration between songwriter Ali Forbes and producer Andy Savours, who ventures from behind the production desk for the first time on their debut album, Rain River Sea.
Savours, renowned for his work with the likes of the Horrors, Sigur Ros and My Bloody Valentine, is clearly a man for whom soundscapes are key to the music and the songs here clearly reference some of his previous work.
However, much of the album opts for a low-fi approach, in what has been dubbed folk-tronica, the songs gradually revealing their charms rather than making an immediate impact. Opener and first single Under Her Sails sets the tone nicely, with the Green Light and Here Comes The Rain also impressing. However, on occasion as the music meanders, so does the listener's attention. Nevertheless, its highlights undoubtedly show promise.
THREE STARS
Kim Mayo
Lamb of God
VII: Sturm und Drang
FOLLOWING lead singer Randy Blythe's imprisonment and subsequent acquittal of manslaughter charges in the Czech Republic, Lamb Of God, one of America's greatest gifts to contemporary metal, understandably took a bit of time out.
But not ones to fall behind the pack, the lads return in suitably brutal fashion with VII: Sturm und Drang, a great but not outstanding addition to their back catalogue.
Blythe's time in prison has clearly had aN impact on his songwriting, as his personal experiences are strewn lyrically through Still Echoes and 512, both super-charged hardcore anthems.
This is pretty much the theme for this album as over the years the band has been steadily slipping away from their groove metal roots in favour of a faster thrash and death metal sound, and VII may be being the pinnacle, with the breakneak riffage of and Delusion Pandemic showing off the band's tightly knitted chops.
A little more variety would be nice, but this will please those who a enjoy unfussy, in-your-face metal.
FOUR STARS
Steven Cookson
Haiku Salut
Etch and Etch Deep
TRULY, there are no words. None at all, on this second album from Derbyshire's Haiku Salut, a band whose name might be a Japano-Franco steal but whose identity cannot be defined by geography or vocals, of which this is bereft beyond occasional ethereal soft-sung sighs.
Step back from labelling theirs the sound of new Matlock, and absorb instead the gorgeous melodies and spool after spool of tightly wound subtlety within Etch And Etch Deep. Formed by friends Gemma Barkerwood, Sophie Barkerwood, and Louise Croft, who each played in the playground-pop band The Deirdres, Haiku Salut now meld an array of traditional instruments – piano, glockenspiel, accordion, ukulele among them – to synths and samplers.
The mix of traditional and modern means reroutes the trio's sound from elementary folk and affords it a whirligig electronica spin, diverging into drum and bass on Skip To The End, bedroom dreampop on You Dance A Particular Algorithm and gossamer-soft techno on Hearts Not Parts. Super stuff.
FOUR STARS
John Skilbeck
