Music critic

Published 8th May 2025, 16:30 BST

The Kooks: Never/Know (Virgin) ★★★

Billy Nomates: Metalhorse (Invada Records) ★★★★

Louise Connell: Clients of Suddenness (Last Night From Glasgow) ★★★

My Glass World: Stranded Assets (Luxury Noise Records) ★★★★

Like many bands who rode in on the coattails of Britpop, the appeal of Brighton outfit The Kooks has proved durable. Twenty years and seven albums in, two founding members remain – frontman Luke Pritchard and guitarist Hugh Harris – and it’s time for something of a musical reset.

Never/Know won’t win any prizes for originality but it does bowl along with a freshness and ease which belies the band’s vintage. Opening track Never Know is a sparkling shop window to the album, breezing along with toytown keyboards and summery guitars.

Sunny Baby, a song for Pritchard’s children, keeps the touch light (if a tad less engaging) but the indie gospel balm and twinkling synth embellishments of All Over the World has its charms and they keep the indie stodge at bay on the Belle & Sebastian-like retro pop trip of If They Could Only.

Compass Will Fracture is a straightforward indie pop joint at heart but comes layered in psychedelic, gothic and classic rock influences while they succeed in styling it out through the beseeching reggae rock of Tough at the Top.

In a further nod to their quiet confidence, they amp up the balmy yacht rock elements of Wings cover Arrow Through Me before ending in relaxed mode on Talk About It, a laidback song of encouragement which, like the rest of the album, gets the job done nicely.

Bristol-based musician Tor Maries, aka Billy Nomates, bounces back in style from the barrage of unjustified and unjustifiable abuse which followed her 2023 Glastonbury performance. Apparently one woman singing and triggering her own samples doesn’t cut it for some.

Maries moves on with a lick of sophistication to her third album, leaving behind her lo-fi punky roots for slicker singer-songwriting fare, recording for the first time in a studio with a rhythm section.

Metalhorse is themed around the rollercoaster of life, deploying funfair imagery from the horses on the merry-go-round to the sideshow games of chance as metaphors for spiralling life events (in her case, the death of her father and her own MS diagnosis) and the precarity of life in the music business. “When did all the circus get so expensive” she asks on Override, while she dices with the disorientating effects of the hall of mirrors and wall of death on The Test.

Along the way, she shows off the country character in her voice on the likes of Strange Gift and swaggers through the dramatic bluesy pop of Life’s Unfair. Former Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell intones the title of Dark Horse Friend and the whole enterprise revs up a gear with the motivational workout of Plans and the propulsive drumming of Gas, featuring fluent vocals which are strident and silky as required.

Previously recording as Reverieme, Airdrie singer/songwriter Louise Connell releases her new album ahead of her July support slot with labelmate Peter Capaldi. Clients of Suddenness was recorded with Big Country’s Mark Brzezicki and bassist Lewis Gordon (Deacon Blue/Codeine Velvet Club) and glides from the elegant electro pop ambience of The Machine to the streamlined pop rock of All the Smartest People. Awakenings exudes a mild Celtrock influence and there is a wisp of Celtic mysticism to Connell’s ethereal vocals on Build a Home, playing off the soothing tones of her duet partner, Hipsway’s Graeme Skinner.

My Glass World is a long-running vehicle for the songs of Jamie Telford, originally from Langholm. Latest album Stranded Assets is garlanded with the saxophone and woodwind skills of Dexys and Edwyn Collins associate Sean Read, creating an eminently listenable soundtrack of baroque pop, 80s soul and jazz funk, burnished guitar textures and chiming percussion which recalls classic The The in mood and execution.

CLASSICAL

Nicola Benedetti: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto (Decca) ★★★★

In a matter seconds you know this Beethoven Violin Concerto will be different. Featuring soloist Nicola Benedetti, the Aurora Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon, it’s those four opening timpani strokes - militaristically rigid, dry as a bone - that prepare the ears for a performance that is curiously lean, neatly determined, yet at the same time captures both the visionary and the unpredictable in Beethoven. The latter is intensified by a first movement cadenza - jointly penned by Benedetti and pianist Petr Limonov based on the composer’s piano version and featuring a dialogue with the timpani - that journeys into far-flung reaches, stretching the harmonic logic to extremes yet somehow getting back to base. The central Larghetto prolongs the opening movement’s lucidity, but with a levitating veil of mystery. Then a sparkling Finale, spirited and impish. If some of the concerto’s pungency is perhaps diminished by this novel approach, there’s also plenty to gain. Ken Walton

FOLK

Dan Sealey: Beware of Darkness (Own Label) ★★★★

Formerly bass guitarist with Ocean Colour Scene, Dan Sealey wrote much of this album during Covid lockdown and titled it after a George Harrison song, and there are distinctly Beatles-ish echoes to some of his harmonies, not least in the opener, Looking Inward. In fact there’s something of a Sixties vibe to the whole album’s sound – the vocal harmonies of Yesterday Came, for instance, bring the Byrds to mind – but there’s nothing retro about Sealey’s thoughtful, persuasively delivered lyrics matched to catchy tunes. They’re accompanied by his own guitar playing and by vocalist Antonia Kirby, John McCusker on fiddle and whistles and Jack Blackman on banjo and slide guitar, while Rikki Hansel’s harmonica adds a spaghetti western edge to the bitter People. Elsewhere, there are plaintive confessionals in Into the Wild and Inside My Head, and a heartfelt plea for solidarity and humanity in All Stand Up. Jim Gilchrist

Album reviews: The Kooks | Billy Nomates | Louise Connell | My Glass World

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