Eve Adams
Metal Bird
(Basin Rock)
★★★★

AS the cover and title suggest, flying is a central theme of the third record from Oklahoma-born singer-songwriter Eve Adams. “For me, the airplane is symbolic of something very close to death,” she says.

Written in the shadow of the passing of a family member, the jazzy-folk songs seem designed to be listened to in middle of the night. The music has minimal or no percussion, giving it a delicate, ethereal quality. “Cause trouble comes knocking and blues come your way,” she croons on opener Blues Look The Same.

“Grief is grief,” she says, “and if someone resonates with that message then this album may provide some solace.”
 
With Adams listing filmmaker David Lynch and poets William Blake and Dylan Thomas as key inspirations, Metal Bird is an exquisitely realised, controlled set, her vocals filled with dark romanticism and foreboding.
 

Black Country, New Road
Ants From Up There
(Ninja Tune)
★★★★

COMING just one year after their Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Ants From Up There is another stunning set of experimental rock, meaning the Cambridge-born seven piece will continue to be heralded as the saviours of British indie rock.
 
More conventional and a little less edgy than their first record, the songs are more linear (radio-friendly?) in structure.

Single Chaos Space Marine reaches a thrilling crescendo that is reminiscent of Different Class-era Pulp, while Good Will Hunting is a sort of millennial blues comprising summering in France “with our genius daughters,” Billie Eilish, phone call phobia and moving to Berlin.

Frontman Isaac Wood’s vocals are once again incredibly powerful, sounding, at turns, frightened, fragile and unhinged. On songs like The Place Where He Inserted The Blade he’s a dead ringer for Okkervil River’s Will Sheff.

Urgent, emotionally potent controlled chaos.
 

The Delines
The Sea Drift
(Décor)
★★★★

ACCORDING to Willy Vlautin, lyricist and guitarist in The Delines, the band’s third album came out of a shared love he and vocalist Amy Boone have for singer-songwriter Tony Joe White, specifically his signature song Rainy Night In Georgia.
 
This influence is clear in the US outfit’s consummate country soul and cinematic storytelling, with Vlautin a successful novelist, as well as the frontman of sadly defunct altcountry heroes Richmond Fontaine.

Like their previous records, Boone’s gorgeous voice tells of working-class and down and out characters living along the Gulf Coast, such as a woman driving around aimlessly unwilling to return home to her family (Drowning In Plain View) and the couple coming to the end of their relationship during a car journey (All Along The Ride).

The Sea Drift is another melancholic and moving masterwork from The Delines.