Thank Your Lucky Stars Review

The band insisted this was not a collection of leftovers, and the insistence has never been very convincing. It arrived two months after Depression Cherry with no announcement, it was cut in the same sessions, and it plays like the shadow of that record: same palette, less shape, sourer mood. There are good things on it. Elegy to the Void is genuinely strong, a slow build to a distorted guitar climax that is the loudest they have been.

She's So Lovely and Majorette have interesting bones. The overall register is more sombre and there is a welcome bluntness to some of the arrangements. But the melodies are underwritten, several tracks stop rather than end, and the record has none of the flow that makes their best albums work as single objects. Interesting for anyone already invested and a poor entry point for anybody else. Two albums in a season was an act of confidence that the material did not quite support.