Skip to main content
The Morning Star Shop
Album reviews with IAN SINCLAIR: July 29, 2024
New releases from Liana Flores, Hamish Hawk, and Meshel Ndegeocello

Liana Flores
Flowers Of The Soul
(Verve/Fiction Records)

★★★★

 

STARTING out performing and releasing music on YouTube, it’s been a meteoritic rise for Liana Flores. In 2022 the young singer-songwriter from Norwich tweeted that she was handing in her undergraduate dissertation. Just two years later, with her wonderful debut album out in the wild, she will soon embark on a tour of North America, mainland Europe and Britain.

While I’m not keen on national stereotypes, that Flores is British-Brazilian makes a lot of sense when you listen to her music, which seems effortlessly to blend breezy bossa nova with the sensibility of late ’60s/early ’70s jazzy English folk artists like Pentangle, Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake.

The ethereal, shimmering sound may be a little too much for some people. But many more are going to fall hard for this charmingly irresistible record that will soundtrack their summer.

Hamish Hawk
A Firmer Hand
(So Recordings)

★★★★

 

I’M a huge fan of Hamish Hawk’s 2023 album Angel Numbers — my Morning Star review said it confirmed him “as one of the most exciting artists in British indie music today” — and his new record is another hit.

Produced by Rod Jones (Idlewild), the set of literate, darkly playful songs considers the Scottish singer-songwriter’s relationships with men — friends, lovers, colleagues and family — and feelings such as guilt, shame and repression. Unsurprisingly, he has talked about Morrissey being a key influence.

Opener Juliet As Epithet sets the tone with its ice-cold synths and confessional lyrics about smothering chances, a man “so Goddamn handsome he makes me anxious” and the lonely line “I’m just the open secret no-one’s ever gonna blow.”

With his deep baritone and pop sensibilities, file Hawk alongside Neil Hannon, Franz Ferdinand and Scott Walker. 

Meshel Ndegeocello
No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin
(Blue Note)

★★★★

INSPIRED by James Baldwin, in particular his essay The Fire This Time, and released to coincide with the centennial of the African-American author’s birth, No More Water is a hugely ambitious, intensely political album.

US musician Meshel Ndegeocello leads the show, running through jazz, soul, funk, hip hop and rock, employing several vocalists and spoken-word pieces, including a French language track.

Raise The Roof stands out on first listen — a heart-stopping, Black Lives Matter-inspired monologue full of righteous anger from Jamaican poet and activist Staceyann Chin that name checks Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and Trayvon Martin.

“Almost a decade-and-a-half into the 21st century and race relations in America is still a fucking cauldron,” she spits about the white supremacist power structure. “Get up, stand up … It is time to raise the roof on these motherfuckers!”

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
KB Albums
Music / 28 April 2025
28 April 2025

New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott

Album reviews / 27 January 2025
27 January 2025
New releases from Nadia Reid, Manic Street Preachers and Mathias Eick
Album reviews / 2 December 2024
2 December 2024
John Cale's rediscovered classic album 1919, and new releases from Father John Misty and Lucinda Williams
Album reviews / 18 November 2024
18 November 2024
New releases from Jennifer Castle, Primal Scream and Keith Jarrett