Example: Live Life Living review – big choruses but a troubled heart

Encouraged by the success of his 2011 album, Playing in the Shadows, singer/rapper Example plumped for an experimental, guitar-accented follow-up in 2012, only to find that fans emphatically preferred the beery rave-hop that had made him famous. Live Life Living returns to that infernally catchy template, albeit with a touch of sobriety. Instead of hedonistic celebration, opening track Next Year gloomily notes – as Chemical Brothersy synths rake the air – that it's just a brief respite from the nine-to-five. Likewise, one of the big bangers, Kids Again, explodes into an EDM climax just as Example reflects that happiness as a 32-year-old isn't a patch on the uncomplicated joy he knew as a teenager. And the three songs dedicated to his wife – of which One More Day is the most propulsive – are whopping house tracks with troubled hearts: his marital bliss is tempered with sung-rapped memories of the loneliness of life before her. Not quite your average mega-bantz lad-rapper, then – file him somewhere between raging-bull Plan B and a more thoughtful Professor Green.