Best known as half of Manchester electronica duo Lamb, Lou Rhodes has been quietly fashioning a concurrent solo career in atmospheric, gently pastoral folk for some years. Her fourth album sees love balladry and witchy woodland acoustica collide. Cellos, plucked harps and electronic textures augment a sound that emerges somewhere between Nick Drake, Carole King’s Tapestry and the Wicker Man soundtrack. Devotional love songs mix with gentle eco-anthems. In the happily electronic Sea Organ, Rhodes sings of “the damage we have done, just as if the earth has spoken”, while All I Need finds her eulogising the “true adoration of sweet mother nature”. There’s more vivid imagery in Magic Ride: “finding faces in a blanket as the trains go rushing by”. Her slightly Alanis Morrisetteish voice can sound too mannered in places, and the songwriting is occasionally uneven, but the best moments – such as her whispered cover of the xx’s Angels – are truly lovely.
