Album reviews: Anne-Marie, Speedy Ortiz, Twin Shadow, Okkervill River, Willie Nelson

Rising pop star Anne-Marie releases a debut album jam-packed with infectious, dance-worthy bangers, while Willie Nelson mourns departed friends on ‘Last Man Standing’

Roisin O'Connor,Ilana Kaplan,Nick Hasted
Wednesday 25 April 2018 14:34 BST
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‘Speak Your Mind’ is a debut packed with spirited bops from an artist who, so far, has been rather underestimated
‘Speak Your Mind’ is a debut packed with spirited bops from an artist who, so far, has been rather underestimated

Anne-Marie – Speak Your Mind

★★★☆☆

Download: “Ciao Adios”, “Then”, “Alarm”

Anne-Marie is something of an anomaly in the UK pop scene: an artist who sounds as though she should be bigger than she is right now.

The Essex-born pop singer is less polished than most pop fans will have come to expect, but the streetwise sass is what makes her stand out in a very crowded field, and her debut album Speak Your Mind is jam-packed with the stuff.

Opening with “Cry”, a top-of-the-lungs belter that recalls the anthemic, uplifting style of Norwegian pop star Sigrid, she stamps down that trademark zero-f**ks given attitude when it comes to men who waste her time.

On single “Ciao Adios” you can picture the curl of the lip and the mic drop as she dismisses an unfaithful boyfriend. Both songs offer pleasingly refreshing takes on the ‘you cheated’ track; she’s not wasting time crying over this one, he wasted his chance.

This theme continues with the next track “Alarm” – the first, top 40 single from this album – remixed to include more of a Calypso influence that runs throughout, featuring a stuttered synth on the intro as she sings with a menacing calm.

The first half of Speak Your Mind is undoubtedly the strongest, showing that Anne-Marie is no one-trick pony when it comes to infectious, dance-worthy bangers. Really, it’s astonishing how many there are on this 12-track record.

“Then” is a heartfelt, urgent lament for a relationship that grew toxic, featuring a similar string-plucking hook to Vaults’ song “One Last Night”, which featured in the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack.

Anne-Marie deals with issues of body image on “Perfect”, a generic ballad about resisting pressure to conform to stereotypical ideals of femininity. But the mood and dynamic on the album is swiftly picked up again with the hilarious, eye-roll of a track that is “FRIENDS”, where she despairs of someone who can’t accept she just. isn’t. interested.

Ed Sheeran is all over the R‘n’B-influenced “2002”, with its nostalgia-fuelled, rather dubious lyrics about “dancing on the hood in the middle of the woods on an old Mustang” (because what Essex teen hasn’t done that?). The chorus is a sweet tribute to some genre-defining songs of the early Noughties: “Oops I got 99 problems singing bye, bye, bye / Hold up, if you wanna go and take a ride with me / Better hit me, baby, one more time,” nodding to Britney Spears, Jay Z, *NSYNC, Nelly and Spears again, respectively.

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Speak Your Mind plays out with a casual disregard for genre barriers, as only a project by a streaming-age artist can (convincingly, anyway); there are nods to EDM, folk, Calypso, pure pop, and even a little Afrobeat on “Can I Get Your Number”. It’s a debut packed with spirited bops from an artist who, so far, has been rather underestimated. (Roisin O’Connor)

★★★★☆

Download: “Lucky 88”, “Can I Kiss You?”, “Backslidin’”, “Villain”

Like many artists, the 2016 presidential election affected Speedy Ortiz. For some musicians, it came out in certain songs, but didn’t alter the course of the band’s direction. But for Speedy Ortiz, the election caused them to rethink their songs overall.

Instead of intimate tracks about love or personal issues, Speedy Ortiz opted to focus on the social and political issues plaguing the nation. At the heart of frontperson Sadie Dupuis’ music has been a focus on educating and advocating for issues that affect the greater good: Dupuis seamlessly sang about the sexiness of consent in her solo project Sad13 (“Get A Yes”) and confronting politics at family dinners in Speedy Ortiz (“MCGA”).

Three years since the band’s last album Foil Deer, Speedy Ortiz have remained rooted in their ethos of dealing with the world’s chaos on Twerp Verse. The band returned with a familiar, grunge-rock “Lucky 88”, seemingly placing a subtle reference to Trump in the lyrics with the word “carnage”: “I make a frown. I always wear it upside down, ‘cause life is carnage.”

Dupuis addresses her mental health on “Lean In When I Suffer”, and once again aptly addresses consent in the fuzzy “Can I Kiss You?” Their latest effort is a much-welcomed return to form. (Ilana Kaplan)

Twin Shadow – Caer

★★★★☆

Download: “Sympathy”, “Brace”, “Saturdays”, “Little Woman”

Twin Shadow proves he’s one of the most innovative artists of our time on his latest record Caer. The musician, born George Lewis Jr, aptly chose the title “Caer” – meaning “to fall” in Spanish – because he’s found himself on the verge of destruction before a new phase begins.

It’s something that has not only been significant to him personally, but also on a political level. Caer is emotionally complex, and according to Lewis, a “sister record” to his 2010 debut Forget because of its many layers.

On Caer, Lewis once again proves he can be a standout creative force while creating intimate songs that are universally relatable. He even takes the front seat when it comes to his sound – producing every track on the album. With his debut single “Saturdays” he fashioned the ultimate synth-pop collaboration with glossy sister trio HAIM, which is a perfect lead-in to the Eighties and Nineties pop ethos of Caer.

Lewis continues his foray in experimental pop through two seamless duets with pop singer Rainsford on the dark pop “Brace” and “Sympathy.” On “Too Many Colours”, he sings, “I’m too mixed up”, exploring the depths of his creativity on the bombastic, disco track. Caer shows that Twin Shadow’s limitless approach to pop suits him just fine. (Ilana Kaplan)

Okkervil River – In the Rainbow Rain

★★★★☆

Download: “Famous Tracheotomies”, “The Dream and the Light”, “Love Somebody”, “Pulled Up The Ribbon”

Will Sheff’s last Okkervil River album, Away, offered heart-piercingly direct emotion worthy of Jimmy Webb, as well as his familiar knotty baroqueness. Its lyrics also buried the band’s old line-up, close relatives and the rock age.

Now comes this rebirth, in which he sounds cleansed of old complications. With his spiritual horizons broadened by psychedelics and Quaker services, but battered by America’s vicious new president, he wants to positively use “the agency creation has gifted me”.

He begins, though, with two old-school Okkervil epics. “Famous Tracheotomies” ponders the stars who’ve shared the op which saved his own life. “The Dream and the Light” then assembles a dense cast of suicide bombers and media parasites in a Dylanesque parade, ratcheting up its strange power with each wild, gaudy twist. But then at its end, the song insists we are “made of love”, wiping away the lyrics’ teeming despair and corruption with a blinding flash of human divinity.

There are diversions from this path, as with the whimsical Wings harmonies of “Don’t Move Back To LA”. Sheff’s desire to share his giddy enlightenment is hampered, anyway, by ripping up Okkervil’s recent gorgeous chamber-rock for brash 1980s synths and saxes. His viscerally abrasive writing has also been sacrificed for inclusive humility. Even his voice sometimes slips from a yearning ache to something more syrupy.

Sheff’s search for transcendence in dark times and simple wish to connect are admirable. But he sounds dazed by this conversion to positive thinking. Reintegrating his old splenetic fire would help communicate his new kind of love song. (Nick Hasted)

Willie Nelson – Last Man Standing

★★★★☆

Download: “Last Man Standing”, “Me And You”, “Ready to Roar”, “I’ll Try To Do Better Next Time”

“I don’t want to be the last man standing,” Willie Nelson opines, as he releases 11 new songs two days short of his 85th birthday. “Well, wait a minute, maybe I do…”

Don’t be fooled by the weary, sepia-tinted Willie on Last Man Standing’s sleeve. He has little truck here with the rugged nobility expected of icons of his vintage as they contemplate the last round-up. That trope was jointly patented by Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind (which contemplated his mortality at the tender age of 56), and Nelson’s friend Johnny Cash, as country music’s Mount Rushmore sounded more riven with pain with each late release.

Rather than the embalming hand of the producer behind Cash’s last act, Rick Rubin, Nelson has favoured producer and co-writer Buddy Cannon during his last, prolific decade. Backed by a band who vigorously play to his timeless strengths, he sounds as sprightly as ever.

The recent death of friends such as Merle Haggard “cuts like a wore-out knife”, Nelson admits on the title track. But his equable voice is as close to mild speech as singing, and in both respects closer to the similarly indestructible Tony Bennett than his few remaining country peers.

His quaver as he lowers that voice into the intimate regret of “Something You Get Through”, the album’s one sorrowful song about loss, is a rare sign of frail decline. The payday roistering of “Ready to Roar” follows, as if in amiable defiance. (Nick Hasted)

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