Though she is also the frontwoman of the trip-hop outfit Lamb, Lou Rhodes belongs to an earlier, kinder age when songs in praise of nature were crooned around a campfire and it was de rigueur to wear flowers in your hair. Lyrically, then, her fourth album is hippy-dippy (“Just as if the earth had spoken in a voice so real - ‘come to me, children, for we are all one’”), but the music, mostly played on piano, harp and cello, is quietly dramatic and never less than fresh. Hazy and mellifluous, theyesandeye possesses a Nick Drake-like attention to detail, from All the Birds, which starts with the sound of seagulls, to the innocent, sinuous Hope & Glory. Full marks, too, for the cover of the xx’s Angels, which indicates her desire to extend folk’s reach.
