The new album, Solstice, from the amazing A.A. Williams is with us.

The first blindingly obvious difference is the album cover – Previous covers have been deliberately blurred or just glimpses of a face hiding beneath a Claudia Winkleman style fringe but here we have a full-frontal face shot. A sign of confidence or an attempt to be more open?   

If it’s confidence, then it’s well founded. Another glorious album of languid melancholy showing absolute mastery of the quiet-loud song style. Musically it doesn’t diverge too far from the previous As The Moon Rests album with a polished post rock feel. 

Poison is a powerful and melodic opener setting the tone while later on The Veil is an achingly beautiful piano only ballad.

My favourite track is the 6-minute Hold It Together. For half the song it’s a gentle tale of piano led despondency which suddenly erupts into a febrile wall of tremulous guitars and choirs. The comedown at the end is stunning.

Lyrically it’s still dense and at times difficult to hear but that voice is so fabulous….

Another A.A. Williams album destined to make the album of the year list.

 Don’t normally do singles reviews but I chose these from opposite ends of my musical taste.

First up are Black Metal legends, Enslaved, who have decided to sing some sea shanties with the Storm Weather Shanty Choir. An odd choice but fisherman also tend to be hulking men in beards so maybe not that different.

The A side is Fire Marengo which appears to be a very popular shanty (Longest Johns and Bellowhead are just two examples of other versions I’ve seen).

Vocally it’s very standard apart from one section about 2 mins 30 in where they let the vocalist from Enslaved indulge in some very metal growling. Apart from that there’s a short fun guitar solo and an anvil being hammered just to confirm the involvement of the rest of the Viking horde.

The B side is a beautiful Norwegian shanty Anna Lovinda and a lot more traditional. Apart some huge doomy guitar chords this could easily be played in a folk club without offending those in attendance.

There is a stunning black and white splatter 7” which I couldn’t resist.

For something completely different, Vanessa Funke makes gorgeous post punk/New Order inspired rock under the name of The Occasion. However, she also has a side project called Movement for some very retro synth pop.

So Far Away is very 80’s with waves of synths over some amazing drum machine programming. It pulses along topped off by Vanessa singing where she absolutely nails the almost uninterested, jaded vocals that the Human League did so perfectly.   

The B side is an instrumental called Game of Chance. A slightly faster track making more use of stabs of keyboard – You can almost see someone stood next to a vintage synthesizer, tapping out the notes one handed. 

So far, I’ve loved everything I’ve heard from her, so I need to investigate more