Nadine Shah doesn’t hold back on her third album, a powerful state-of-the-world address. The title track – inspired by witnessing the xenophobia of holidaymakers on the island of Kos – looks at the wider treatment of refugees and asks “How you gonna sleep tonight?” The north-easterner (of Norwegian-Pakistani heritage) brings personal experience and powerful argument to Out the Way’s dissection of anti-immigration feeling (“Where would you have me go? I’m second-generation, don’t you know?”). The song 2016 looks especially prescient in light of Charlottesville (“There’s a fascist in the Whitehouse”). Such zingers are delivered over darkly classy post-punk, in which the ghosts of PJ Harvey and Siouxsie and the Banshees hover over grinding guitars and rasping sax. Yes Men is the catchiest of some strong (if not always immediate) tunes, put together with long-term collaborator, Ben Hillier. She’s not yet gone for the poppier approach to take her messages more mainstream, but few current artists make music with such a simmering edge.
