Steady Habits
Deviate
(Mahogany Songs)
★★★

AFTER his previous band folded, Sean Duggan relocated from Connecticut, US, to Oxford, England, setting up the altcountry outfit Steady Habits with local musicians.

Having received coverage on BBC Wales and BBC Introducing, Deviate is their full length debut. It feels like a very ’90s record, with Duggan’s heartfelt vocals and songwriting sitting somewhere between Jason Isbell and Ryan Adams circa his Whiskeytown days. You can imagine Drive-By Truckers and Israel Nash are firm favourites of the band too.

Coming out later in his life, Duggan brings a queer sensibility to the set, with the title track a love letter to his younger self, detailing how he brought a mail order catalogue of ball gowns to his school’s “show and tell” day. “I’m no good at walking a straight line/ Baby I was born to deviate,” he sings.

Jeff Tweedy
Twilight Override
(dBpm)
★★★★

JEFF TWEEDY has been busy. Since 2020 his band Wilco has released three albums and he’s written two books. Now he’s putting out his fifth solo record — a triple album, no less.

In the press release the US singer-songwriter talks about the world “getting darker” with “the disintegration of a country that you thought you knew and understood.” However, I can’t detect any coherent politics across the 30 songs — he’s always been a cryptic lyricist. What I can confirm is Tweedy has written an engaging, varied suite of downbeat indie rock, assisted by his two sons and guitarist James Elkington.

There’s a lot to take in, from the spoken word Parking Lot to No One’s Moving On with its Wilcoesque guitar squalls.

Closing in on 60, it turns out the twilight of Tweedy’s career is actually very bright.

Tom Skinner
Kaleidoscopic Visions
(International Anthem)
★★

TOM SKINNER co-founded two of the more interesting UK bands of recent years — the incendiary jazz quartet Sons Of Kemet, and The Smile with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood.

Kaleidoscopic Visions is the second solo record from the London-based drummer, composer and producer. The catchy Margaret Anne honours his mother, a former classical concert pianist who abandoned her career in the face of misogyny, and Auster is a tribute to the late US novelist Paul Auster.

While the press release describes it as “sonically adventurous”, to my — perhaps uninformed ears — the largely instrumental jazz set seems a little pedestrian and unfocused, especially when compared to the often urgent music put out by the two aforementioned bands. There’s certainly some interesting sounds and ideas — check out The Maxim featuring vocals from Meshell Ndegeocello — but generally it feels pretty underwhelming.