The Anchoress is the pseudonym of Catherine Davies who has just released her debut album, Confessions of a Romance Novelist, on Kscope.


The music press are raving over her as a new Kate Bush or Tori Amos but that's fairly far from the truth. The songs are very pop orientated and the voice is nowhere near those aforementioned artists.


The biggest influence I can hear is Mansun from their album Six which is no surprise as Paul Draper of that band is heavily involved. Strangely the voice reminds me of modern day Berlin (though as the only person buying their albums still it's unlikely anyone else will notice)


One for Sorrow is a an excellent pop song and has a nagging chorus which I've heard before but can't place.


Ms Davies has been touring with Simple Minds and there is a lovely piano led cover of their song Rivers of Ice (from the Real Life album) ending the album


A sturdy debut album but don't believe the hype.....

I've been sat thinking about this review for about a week and what I can say to say about this simply extraordinary piece of art.... ATGCLVSSCAP by Ulver is an album unlike any I've heard.


The band undertook a series of concerts to just improvise songs and then took the recorded results back to the studio to be manipulated which has led to some fascinating music.


The opening 'song' of England's Hidden is all church bells and drones but the album is impossible to describe as a whole and it's easier to just list the draw dropping moments

• Halfway through second track Glammer Hammer where the band just drop in a shuddering heavy riff that almost stops the song dead in its tracks
• On Cromagnosis where the tempo changes up from a krautrock groove to a more propulsive  and percussive Hawkwind sound
• Where after 9 tracks of shifting instrumental drones and soundscapes you suddenly get an actual song - vocals, verse, chorus everything !! Nowhere (Sweet Sixteen) sounds like something from the North of England around the early eighties. Think long grey coats, Echo & the Bunnymen and you get the idea
• The point in Ecclesiastes (A Vernal Catnap) where it stops sounding like a monk reciting the latin mass and becomes a keening ballad about loss

Ulver have got to be considered one of the most progressive bands around from their black metal roots, to symphonic orchestral pieces via covers of sixties psychedelica but this is a crowning achievement.


Even though it's only January any band is going to struggle to match this let alone beat it (sorry, Marillion) and this may actually be the best album I've reviewed since I started this blog in 2012

Having had time to digest the Prog magazine writers list I can announce for the second year running my closest match was with deputy editor Hannah May Kilroy...

An impressive four matches included Chelsea Wolfe, Enslaved and Nordic Giants with much kudos for choosing Kontinuum as her number one album of the year !

And so we come to my top 10 albums of 2015 (my 4th such list !).... As ever in alphabetical orders the winners were:

Blackberry Smoke - Holding all the Roses
Gwenno - Y Dydd Olaf
Kontinuum - Kyrr
Myrkur - M
Nordic Giants - A Seance of Dark Delusions
Nerina Pallot - The Sound and the Fury
Public Service Broadcasting - The Race for Space
Sexwitch - Sexwitch
Swallow the Sun - Songs From the North
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss

However for the first time I will rate one of these of the best and it was no contest. Take a bow Public Service Broadcasting for a quite stunning album