Album reviews: Everything But The Girl | Feist | Silver Moth | Nathan Connolly

Making an elegant and assured return, Everything But The Girl release their first new album in almost a quarter of a century, a period over which partners Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt have made names for themselves as solo artists and perceptive writers, chronicling their own lives and those of loved ones in a number of well-received books.

A feisty-looking Feist

Middle age has not withered or weathered them, though Thorn’s rich alto has deepened to an androgynous caress, set against skittering beats on opening reintroduction Nothing Left to Lose and lending a husky, sultry tone to Run a Red Light’s appeal to live in the moment and a calm ecstasy to the pulsing Caution to the Wind.

There is an impish intimacy to No One Knows We’re Dancing’s invitation to shimmy to its glacial synth chords and fluid arpeggios, while Lost demonstrates the more ambient roots of this comeback project and Karaoke serves up the chill-out electronic soul of old, as Thorn mulls over the expressive power of singing.

Her voice is pitch-shifted and autotuned to hypnotic effect on jazzy torch song When You Mess Up and goes deep – literally, with more pitch-shifting – on Interior Space, one of the most atmospheric songs on an already evocative album.

Feist also returns in a spirit of gentle exploration with her sixth solo album, created against a rollercoaster personal backdrop of birth (her daughter) and death (her father) but consistent in her use of overdubbed harmonies and a percussive base to create quirky choral pop such as In Lightning, embellished with some exultant guitar and synth riffing.

Her fluttering vocal is set against a harder electronic backdrop (by her mellow standards) on the intriguing I Took All Of My Rings Off, while the overlapping Feists impart contemplative wisdom in a psych folk style on Hiding Out In The Open.

Love Who We Are Meant To is an elegant, timeless ballad played on ringing nylon-stringed guitar while Song for a Sad Friend draws close musically and emotionally, with organ trills, synthesised strings and the soulful swell of her multi-tracked voice.

Take seven strangers, carrying heavy feelings, to a remote island studio, lock them in a room together for four days and see what happens… not an Agatha Christie plotline but the backstory of new ensemble Silver Moth, formed by Abrasive Trees guitarist/songwriter Matthew Rochford and Glasgow-based musician Elisabeth Elektra, who corresponded about their shared love of the Hebrides during lockdown before forming a creative Covid bubble with fellow travellers, including Elektra’s partner Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai, to improvise six lengthy leisurely excursions at Black Bay Studios on Great Bernera.

Nathan Connolly (Picture: Bradley Quinn)

Elektra delivers a requiem for a friend on The Eternal and shares vocals with Evi Vine, who co-wrote the bewitching psych prog-tinged Mother Tongue. Gaelic Hymns is Black Bay’s shortest track by some way but packs in a lot – mournful strings, wheezing harmonium and samples of lapping water contribute to the dark filmic folk backdrop for Rochford’s recitation of his father Gerard’s poetry. From the shortest composition to the longest, Hello Doom is a brooding epic in the Mogwai style but, after the oppression, comes the glinting light and siren call of Sedna.

Snow Patrol guitarist Nathan Connolly has already made a side foray with his group Little Matador but The Strange Order of Things is his debut solo album, offering no radical departure from his parent band’s inoffensive mid-paced indie pop, only forays into emo-esque soundscapes on Night Songs and the dreamy lapping of Waves.

Connelly is joined by guest vocalists Ailbhe Reddy and Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil but, despite recurring imagery of fire, the music doesn’t catch light.