Honne’s second album opens like a thriller. On I Might, singer Andy Clutterbuck imagines faking his own death to live in Tokyo, no boss, “no nothing” – just a little jazzy noir percussion, like the jingling of a pocketful of yen. He wants to “erase the things [he] did” and begs his lover to come along.
The rest of this sleek, emotive album doesn’t quite live up to the implied drama. But this up-and-coming east London-based duo conjure up a compelling emotional landscape of cool robot soul, sprinkling sophisticated umami flavours over familiar pop tropes.
Here, a song such as Feels So Good reinvents Stevie Wonder’s 70s keyboard sound by running it through a minimalist 21st-century filter, fashioning a duet with Anna of the North that could be pap in lesser hands. “You always finish my/ Sentence,” runs one line, started by Anna, concluded by Clutterbuck.
Side one is all loved-up; side two takes on life’s challenges, and Crying Over You cunningly reinvents the breakup song as one about getting over getting over it. What makes for a happy life is this album’s implied question, and as well as all the necessaries about love, Honne offer up idiosyncratic takes on cars (the Peugeot 306, no less) and shrinks.
