Singer-songwriter Tom Hickox is the son of the conductor, Richard, a heavyweight of the international classical music scene who died in 2008. His influence is clear in Hickox Jr’s rumbling baritone delivery – part Morrissey, part opera star – which sounds as though it would require a concert hall to show off its full potential. Here, he upgrades the cut-price Leonard Cohen piano balladeering of his middling 2014 debut, War, Peace and Diplomacy, via baroque pop, tinges of Americana and a more dystopian mood. Opener Man of Anatomy is a haunting lament on addiction that sounds like a coal-black Fleet Foxes, while Perseus and Lampedusa’s “sail away” refrain jars with its account of the migrant crisis. It’s a far more experimental record than his first – The Dubbing Artist, for example, is a near-danceable piece of acoustic EDM about a woman who voiced popular western flicks in Soviet-era Romania. And while it’s a little high on filler, it proves his ability to be a creator as well as an imitator.
