U.S. Girls

★★★★

Scratch It

4AD. CD/DL/LP

Ninth album ditches electronics in favour of shapeshifting country soul.

Trading as U.S. Girls since 2007, Meg Remy has been as impossible to pin down as mercury, moving between tape loop experimentation, artful synth-pop and disco. Here, she has entirely forgone programming, instead assembling a band and recording Scratch It to tape at Bomb Shelter Studios in Nashville in 10 days, resulting in a warm, slightly fuzzy sonic aesthetic. In fact, it sounds so authentically mid-to-late 1960s that Dear Patti – a song about missing an opportunity to play on the same festival bill as Smith – could almost be a lightly warped vinyl pressing from the era. The near-12minute Bookends (a tribute to Remy’s late friend, Riley Gale of Texan thrash metal band Power Trip) is the heart of the record, accelerating from a tremolo guitar ballad into something akin to Horses if it had been recorded in 1967.

Tom Doyle

Barbra Streisand

★★★

The Secret Of Life: Partners, Volume Two

COLUMBIA. CD/DL/LP

Guests including McCartney and Dylan give this genteel collection of duets a welcome bit of spark.

Presented as a sequel to Barbra Streisand’s 2014 duets album Partners, The Secret Of Life differs from its predecessor in one notable way: instead of Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, Peter Asher sits alongside Walter Afanasieff as co-producer. Even if the record’s repertoire isn’t strictly indebted to the Great American Songbook, Asher steers The Secret Of Life toward familiar traditional-pop territory. The placid setting brings out the politeness in Streisand’s guests; even the dynamic duo of Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande seem deferential to their host.

Thankfully, a handful of partners liven up the album with their quirks. Hozier brings gravity to The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Paul McCartney flirts on his own My Valentine, and Bob Dylan grins his way through The Very Thought of You.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Gina Birch

★★★★

Trouble

THIRD MAN. CD/DL/LP

Former Raincoat stirs things up again on second solo LP.

“Sometimes I wake up and I wonder, what is my job?” sang Gina Birch on her 2023 solo debut I Play My Bass Loud. Trouble sees the artist and filmmaker again lean into the musical part of her multipronged career, reclaiming the term ‘disruptor’ from tedious tech-bros. Over a suggestive She’s Lost Control bass line, key track Causing Trouble Again culminates in a list of women – Andrea Dworkin, Nina Simone, Kate Bush – who have agitated and subverted the mainstream, while Keep To The Left issues political instruction over deadpan LED electro. There are downbeat moments – Cello Song sounds like late-period Marianne Faithfull; I Thought I’d Live Forever takes on mortality to a Portishead beat – but Doom Monger’s dub-pop For What It’s Worth or the synth-chorale of Don’t Fight Your Friends (“fight your enemies”) emphasise this is Birch untethered, stretching out and rightfully enjoying the musical havoc she instigates.

Victoria Segal

Nick Mulvey

★★★

Dark Harvest (Part 1)

SUPERNATURAL. CD/DL/LP

Fourth album from singer-songwriter, formerly one-quarter of Portico Quartet.

Since he stepped away from experimental jazz ensemble Portico Quartet with 2014’s Mercury-nominated solo debut First Mind, Nick Mulvey has explored acoustic folk that at its best sounded like a less emotionally fraught Bon Iver, but sometimes wandered into more anodyne singer-songwriter territory. Fourth album Dark Harvest (Part 1) was born from a period of loss and personal tragedy and, as such, the grit and anguish underneath Mulvey’s deft fingerpicking and the soulful smoothness of his voice, are palpable. Holy Days’ jaunty bounce might tread a line between José Gonzáles and Jack Johnson, and there’s a David Gray-like cover of Annie Lennox’s No More “I Love You’s” primed for inclusion on a Lloyds Bank advert, but in its weightier moments – the stark, Andalucian folk-inspired instrumental Death Doula; affecting piano-led farewell Nothing Lasts Forever – Dark Harvest (Part 1) reaps rewards.

Chris Catchpole

Mary Chapin Carpenter

★★★

Personal History

THIRTY TIGERS. CD/DL/LP

Tasteful if earnest self-assessment as singer-songwriter takes stock.

Rightly celebrated as a rare voice for single thirtysomething women, Carpenter broke into the American country mainstream in the early ’90s with up-tempo assertions of independence like I Feel Lucky. Such hits were always juxtaposed with introspective, folky ruminations which dominate this thoughtful collection of fingerpicked ballads. Prompted by the isolation of lockdown, beautifully rendered in the opening title track, the now 67-year-old Carpenter appraises paths taken and not taken in scenarios like Girl And Her Dog or The Day We Never Met. That confiding voice retains its hushed intimacy throughout but there’s a lack of the soaring melodies that distinguish her recent collaboration with Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. Only Bitter Ender, propelled by producer Josh Kaufman’s harmonica, raises the tempo, even if its self-lacerating lyric does little to lighten the prevailing mood of autumnal sadness.

Mark Cooper

Starting from scratch: Meg Remy, AKA U.S. Girls, goes country soul.

Alice Backham, Colin Medley

Jenny Risher

Lukas Nelson

★★★★

American Romance

SONY NASHVILLE. CD/DL/LP

Willie’s boy presents the Lukas 2.0 solo update.

His first album without his (and occasionally Neil Young’s) backing band Promise Of The Real appears to be Lukas Nelson making a deliberate tilt at the big time. With POTR, Nelson was surrounded by fellow “cowboy hippy surf rockers”, given to jamming blues and occasional treks into space rock, but American Romance smartens all that up, just like he’s cut his hair and shaved his beard. Focusing on the songwriting, at its best the album recalls Gene Clark (Outsmarted), folksy Led Zeppelin (All God Did and Make You Happy) and even the very best of his father (the title track). Produced by fellow country scion Shooter Jennings, the songs are Nelson’s love letter to his country, distant mountains and gas station diners metaphors for passing strangers and perennial friendships, and while that may be a nostalgic, romanticised view of current-day America, it’s one we all want to see.

Andy Fyfe

Claudia Brücken

★★★

Night Mirror

DEMON. CD/DL/LP

Existential émigré reflects through a glass darkly.

Raised on Lotte Lenya and Marlene Dietrich, the 20-year-old Brücken joined Düsseldorf’s post-punk conceptualists Propaganda just in time for 1985’s A Secret Wish. She’s been in London ever since, maintaining a stop-start career in electronic pop with a succession of co-writers and producers. Here, she teams up again with Paul Heaton producer John Williams for an often wistful set of beautifully arranged adult pop songs in which Brücken contemplates her past (Rosebud) and tries to seize the moment (My Life Started Today). There’s something charmingly retro about the whole affair – what was once the future now sounds like the past – perhaps most obviously on the chorus of All That We Ever Have which channels PSB’s Left To My Own Devices. Clearly the lingua franca of ’80s synth-pop remains how Brücken sees herself most clearly.

Mark Cooper

Iain Hornal

★★★

Return To The Magic Kingdom

LOJINX. CD

Elite sessioneer’s third solo album.

Iain Hornal aids and abets acts from Take That to Jeff Lynne’s ELO, via Yes and Sophie Ellis-Bextor. His solo career had chugged along gently, probably as more of a sideline than he might wish. Third time around, he’s homed in on upbeat warmth. With a band comprised of fellow Lynne sidemen, it’s no surprise that ELO-style layering and harmonies abound, not least on the near-title-track The Magic Kingdom, which ends with a Dire Straits-esque guitar coda. Hooks which wouldn’t disgrace a Feeling single reinforce occasional quirky nods to another Hornal client, 10cc, whose Graham Gouldman co-wrote and guests on the irresistibly catchy If It Were You. Hornal is a man out of time, his influences are on his sleeve – even Cutting Crew on What Do You Care – but Return To The Magic Kingdom is so relentlessly uplifting, it’s oddly timeless.