The Bevis Frond
★★★★
Focus On Nature
FIRE. CD/DL/LP
Uncrowned classic-rock king Nick Saloman’s brilliant 25th album.
Defying the law of diminishing returns, Saloman’s The Bevis Frond just seem to get better and better, their expertise and urgency only growing with age. By our calculation, this one’s their seventh consecutive double-LP, and it’s fully the equal of underground classics like 1991’s New River Head for its deluge of melodic riches, lyrical depth, stylistic diversity and explosive guitar-playing. Where 2021’s Little Eden railed against evil in broken Britain, Focus On Nature opens with Heat’s nightmarish, post-punk foreboding of eco-catastrophe, quickly followed by the title track’s exquisitely harmonised folk rock idyll. As Saloman soon variously nails Wipers-y thrumming (God’s Gift), late-’60s Kinks whimsy (I’m A Mirror) and Comfortably Numb-era Floyd (Mr Freds Disco), his lyrical lens pans across musicianly kvetch (The Hug, etc), gut-churning fast food (Happy Wings), execrable fashions (Hairstreaks) and more. The songwriting’s uniformly exceptional, the messaging on-the-nose and inspiring – and boy, can he still play guitar.