VINYL OF THE MONTH

Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom Never Work (BB*Island) + Ella Ronen The Girl With No Skin (BB*Island)

“I feel ashamed because I couldn’t become the man that you always hoped I’d become.” The line is repeated during “Father,” The Art of the Lie’s third track. After this, there’s “Mother and Son,” “Daddy” and the allusive “The Child Catcher”. Parent-child relations, from either perspective, are key to John Grant’s sixth solo album. Specifically, how these have rippled through his life to form his present-day self.

At 81, John Cale, an immensely prolific, wide-ranging and innovative musician, continues to take risks, making music that may not always be instantly appealing, but always true to an artist’s authentic path.  Hot on the heels of Mercy (2023), in which he collaborated with a number of off-centre cutting-edge talents, he has produced another album full of surprises and yet immediately recognisable as his own work.

While some tracks on Marina Allen’s third album are country accented and a pedal steel is used a few times, it’s impossible to categorise Eight Pointed Star as Americana. Its sixth track, “Easy”, has the closeted atmosphere of The Velvet Underground’s third album. Next up, the driving “Love Comes Back” has a dash of former Go-Between Robert Forster about it.

When the Lovely Eggs’ married duo of Holly Ross and David Blackwell took to the stage at the recently rebranded XOYO in Birmingham on Bank Holiday Monday, they looked like they should be playing for two completely separate bands. She was looking glam, dressed like a guitar wielding Rόisín Murphy, with a blonde bob and orange and black tiger print dress, while he slid behind his drum kit in a washed-out tour t-shirt and a Johnny Ramone haircut.

Natasha Khan’s musical career has always explored the artier end of pop. Her latest album, her sixth and first in five years, is more akin to the soundtrack work she did with Swiss composer Dominik Scherrer on BBC spook-thriller Requiem in 2018 than her Bat For Lashes albums.

Isobel Campbell has maintained a consistent career on the fringes of popular music for three decades. She's made a home in the area where indie, folk, rock and BBC 6Music merge. Aside from her 1990s involvement with Belle and Sebastian, she’s best-known for her trio of albums with the late Mark Lanegan, her gracefulness and crafted precision working well against his gruff world weariness.

The final track of Samana’s third album is titled “The Preselis,” after the west Welsh mountain range – the place antiquarians suggested as the source of Stonehenge’s blue stones. The song’s opening lyrics are “The blue stones, they grow over me, Carved into mountains, the blood of need.” Later, the words “anima” and “animus” are repeated before the song ends with the recurring refrain “Lay the body down.”

If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.

Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like the trash compactor in the first Star Wars film.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM BIT