WALLIS BIRD
HANDS
MOUNT SILVER
★★★★
Still criminally neglected in the UK, though she’s a radio star in her native Ireland and adopted Germany, Wallis Bird switches her focus on her seventh album –a move signalled by its title and cover, which put the finger she lost as a baby centre stage – to more introspective themes than 2018’s soulful Home and 2019’s politically charged Woman. Not that she does so quietly: the dynamic What’s Wrong With Changing is as Control-ed as Janet Jackson’s late 80s work and I Lose Myself Completely’s vigorous synths will appeal to the same era’s pop fetishists. The wonderfully titled No Pants Dance, too, recalls the true story of an entertaining post-lockdown party witnessed by Bird from her apartment in a fashion which Prince himself would have approved.