Frankie Rose
★★★
Love As Projection
NIGHT SCHOOL. CD/DL/LP
Fifth studio album, five years in the making.
Rose’s legacy is in reverbheavy punk nihilism (The Vivian Girls) and indie-folk noir (Crystal Stilts), but recently she reinterpreted The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds and a hooky, electronic pop-rock charisma invaded her soul. It’s evident from the outset: Sixteen Ways opens with propulsive, ultra-’80s dark sparkle, full of serrated fun and swirling around eerie, sulky vocals. First single Anything is bone-crushingly fine, epic pounding pop with ringing choruses and casual asides: “It takes a lot of nerve/To come and ask for sugar/You’ve never been too sweet, what would your honey think?” After this, Rose trips back to her earlier days with tracks of atmospheric, synth-borne metaverse. Occasionally it’s dull – but the mood’s upbeat where once it was ominous, so Saltwater Girl or DOA are chillout worthy of Air, and Come Back becomes dancey bliss. A liberated shape-shift.