Album: Just Jack

The Outer Marker, RGR

A self-confessed "typical middle-class north Londoner", Jack Allsopp is a young rapper/ songwriter whose debut album marries conventional singer-songwriter virtues to hip hop beats and sample-based grooves. The single "Paradise (Lost & Found)" is typical of his engaging style, with rapped verses over jazzy beats, punctuated by catchy sung choruses. It's a quintessentially modern British mode, reminiscent of both Badly Drawn Boy's low-key outsider beatbox melodicism, and the Streets with a decent tune. Allsopp's concerns are the familiar fundamentals of urban life – loneliness, alienation, thwarted romance – addressed with a disarming equanimity that suggests he's unlikely to be easily fazed by anything. Certainly, his attitude to romantic disaster in the opener "Let's Get Really Honest" is a model of philosophical sangfroid – "Everything has to end, I guess/ This was no exception/ We were gonna have to break connections" – although his return to the theme at the album's close in "Ain't Too Sad" belies his cheery manner: "I ain't too sad you're gone," he claims, "so why am I crying all the time?" The most ambitious piece is probably "Snapshot Memories", which moves through three disparate sections – chattering electro-beat, downtempo rap, and upbeat conclusion – as he tracks a day spent raving. Elsewhere, chilled Massive Attack-style downbeat grooves such as "Snowflakes" and "Deep Thrills" carry Jack's musings about dissociation and urban dystopia in imposingly sinister manner. An impressive debut, especially coming from a typical middle-class north Londoner.