Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album Sour delivers on sky high expectations

OLIVIA RODRIGO — SOUR

Expectations were high for Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album after worldwide hit Drivers License but Sour does not disappoint.

Sometimes a huge hit can dominate an album leaving other tracks feeling lacklustre but, in such a strong collection of emotional songs, it barely stands out. The emotionally charged Favourite Crime, which has a country feel, reflects on compromising yourself to make someone like you.

Melodic but raw Traitor tells of someone denying they have cheated despite immediately starting a new relationship, while the waltz-like Happier is about wanting an ex to be happy — but not as happy as they were with you.

The lyrics are cleverly observed and have an honesty about the bittersweet nature of life, which suggests 18-year-old Rodrigo is wise beyond her years. She also tackles some of the other emotional challenges of modern life.

In the catchy Jealousy, Jealousy, Rodrigo describes having poor self esteem, envying girls “with paper white teeth” that she sees on her phone and thinking too much “about kids who don’t know me”.

And the brilliant opener Brutal turns the frustration of the teenage years into a track which couples her gentle voice with a rockier sound, ideal for shouting in your bedroom when you feel the world doesn’t understand you. 9/10 (Review by Beverley Rouse)

TEXAS — HI

For their 10th album, Scottish rockers Texas intended to release a collection of “lost” material from their 1997 White On Blonde album. Delving through the archives, however, inspired them to do something entirely different.

Some of Hi is new, while several songs, including the Donna Summer-sampling single Mr Haze, are older tracks reworked. The result is an album that captures the youthful exuberance of their Nashville-by-way-of-Glasgow early years, plus a few surprises.

Look What You Have Done is a fantastic, Beach Boys-esque road trip ballad, while Just Want To Be Liked manages to channel Motown, Winehouse, Morricone and in the space of three minutes. The band’s newfound enthusiasm has also resulted in the inclusion of Unbelievable, a soaring ballad quite uncharacteristic of Texas, but nevertheless delightful.

Best of all is the impossibly smooth title track, which reunites the band with Wu-Tang Clan nearly 25 years after their bonkers smash hit Say What You Want (All Day, Every Day). It’s a well needed blast of positivity. 8/10 (Review by Alex Green)

MOBY — REPRISE

Reprise — an orchestral album comprised mostly of reworked hits — is perhaps a bigger deal than you might think. Musicians returning to their music with an orchestra, in this case the Budapest Art Orchestra, is no new phenomenon.

But Moby brings a producer’s touch, a contact book full of star-studded friends and some decent raw material to the table. Most surprising is the fact the self-described “control freak” handed control over the arrangements to someone else.

The Harlem-born 55-year-old has faced accusations of cultural appropriation. Many of his greatest hits have sampled black voices. But here, he hands those songs back.

There is an undeniable joy in hearing Gregory Porter and Amythyst Kiah, two unrivalled American soul voices, reanimate Natural Blues, a song that has long become TV advert fodder.

An orchestral version of Go highlights the original’s Blade Runner-indebted synths and tumbling percussion, while Porcelain is transmogrified into a Beatles-y jam featuring the fragile voice of My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James.

Less exciting is a version of David Bowie’s Heroes sung by Moby’s regular lead singer Mindy Jones that lacks purpose among such dynamic tracklisting, and God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters which melts into a beatless, aimless landscape of strings.

Like much of Moby’s back catalogue, Reprise is heavy on the emotion, but for the most part, better for it. 6/10 (Review by Alex Green)

KELE — THE WAVES PT. 1

Many musicians have been recording more than usual during Covid while gigs were on hiatus, and Kele is no exception. His fine album 2042 in November 2019 was his most political yet, with an angry focus on racial injustice prefiguring the Black Lives Matter movement, but this is more introspective.

Recorded at home during lockdown as a totally solo album, and inspired by film soundtracks and classical music, Kele then listened back during lengthy nighttime walks through a deserted London, and that eerie ambience underpins the record.

Originally intended to be entirely instrumental, Dungeness and The Heart Of The Matter still are, while The Way We Live Now is a warning to a straying lover and Ninevah a forlorn breakup song. The album is patterned with whispered vocals, looped guitar, sampled disembodied voices and atmospheric synths and is a world away from Kele’s arena rock band Bloc Party.

Intention is a woman’s self help wellbeing meditation mantra over New Age backing and bonus track Cradle You a love song, gently strummed acoustic guitar and crooned vocals, a low-key but uplifting ending.

There’s also a gorgeous sparse cover of Smalltown Boy, the 1984 Bronski Beat classic featured in the acclaimed TV series It’s A Sin, stripped of the dancefloor elements, leaving the pathos and yearning for a better life.

None of this sounds like music that Kele has done before or will be playing live, though it’d be fascinating to see him try, while if there’s a Pt 2 of The Waves who knows where Kele will go next? 7/10 (Review by Matthew George)

BLACK MIDI — CAVALCADE

Black Midi are one of those bands so bursting with ideas that you can almost feel the electrical signals pulsing in your own brain when you listen to them. But what was perhaps lacking until now was an emotional connection with the same power. No longer.

As they approached the follow-up to their acclaimed debut album, Schlagenheim, the London four-piece were presented with a problem that soon became an opportunity. Lockdown meant their usual mode of writing, in the rush of the rehearsal room, gave way instead to a slower approach — with the group working up snippets at home which were then shared and developed over time.

Cavalcade, the resulting record, is a much more mature effort that allows them to truly scratch the surface of the band’s potential. At The Drive In-inspired opener John L might fool you into expecting more of the same breathlessness, but what follows instead is a real rollercoaster ride, the peak of which comes at its centre. Slow is a brooding math rock magnum opus of the kind the band has been threatening to produce since bursting on the scene to such excitement two years ago, while Diamond Stuff then dives deep in to a heady fusion of Deerhunter, Pink Floyd and Grizzly Bear.

Black Midi may be exploring even more than before but they don’t seem to be trying quite so hard as they do it — settling in to their innate weirdness rather than trying to make a show of it. The result is something really quite exciting. 8/10 (Review by Stephen Jones).