Album reviews: Lowly, Rip It Up, Una Healey and more

CD OF THE WEEK

Lowly Heba (Bella Union)

Lowly’s sound is defined by duel lead singers Nanna Schannong and Soffie Viemose whose delicate but agile voices dip and swoop across witty and minimal electronic soundscapes. Recent single Deer Eyes is meltingly beautiful, a mood of gently brooding menace opening up into a glorious, Kate Bush-like chorus.

There’s a delicious awkwardness about Look At The Sun, while No Hands draws its power from simple descending and ascending keyboard lines and the chatter of what sounds like Morse code. 

Thunder Rip It Up (earMUSIC)

Digital recording technology has more or less wrecked heavy rock music, every other album just a compressed sludge of over-ampified guitars. But Thunder, led by excellent old-school rock vocalist Danny Bowes, seem to take a a more subtle, analogue-style approach.

Rip It Up has the considered pacing, space and dynamics that recalls 1970s rockers like Montrose, tracks like Heartbreak Hurricane and The Chosen One demonstrating a feel for arrangement that extends even to the inclusion of our old friend the cow bell.

Chuck Prophet Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins (Yep Roc)

The driving force behind 1980s American indie heroes Green On Red, Prophet’s rebellious holler of a voice and cascading guitar lines lend his latest solo album a brilliantly ramshackle charm.

But there’s wit, sharp lyrics and a plenty of edge here, too, the title track referring to an American rock singer who died in mysterious circumstances in the 1960s, while Alex Nieto is an electrifying protest against the shooting of a  Latino security guard by San Francisco police. 

VERDICT: 3/5

Una HealeyThe Waiting Game (Decca)

Her voice may be sweet rather than deeply soulful but former Saturdays singer Una Healey’s debut album stakes her claim for Nashville and a future in modern country pop with a whole clutch of terrific songs.

Craving You is simple, compact pop, Battle Lines lifted by a a swirling Celtic motif.

VERDICT: 3/5

Elbow Little Fictions (Polydor)

Now completely dominated by the wordily indulgent Guy Garvey, the rest of the band merely supplying a few skittering electronics to underpin his mournful vocals Elbow are a band in dire need of an overhaul.

This seventh album repeats the formula ad-nauseum, only two tracks – the opening Magnificent She Says and the Blue Nile-esque Gentle Storm – rising above the mundane.

VERDICT: 2/5