(Pop, Indie, Alternative) Nerina Pallot - The Sound And The Fury - 2015, MP3, 320 kbps

The Sound And The Fury, Nerina’s fifth album, is released on September 11th on her own Idaho Records. To describe the album as a departure from its four predecessors is something of an understatement. When Nerina says it’s her mid-life crisis album, she’s only half joking. When she says it isn’t her happiest collection of songs, she isn’t kidding. The album is as tempestuous as its title suggests. It’s a bold, bluesy, Biblical storm, in turns restless, aggressive and defiant. Sonically too there’s been a shift. Inspired by Nerina and her producer (and husband) Andy Chatterley’s collective electronic roots it’s atmosphere crackles with electronics, space is as vital as sound and textures matter as much as melodies. From the crackling, menacing electro-blues of opener This Is A Drum to spectral, reflective, electro-classical closer The Longest Memory, The Sound And The Fury is as beguiling beautiful as it is disturbingly dark. Inspired by actual events and the emotions they evoked, The Sound And The Fury is an album of stories, from the city, from inside Nerina’s mind, from weeks spent glued to the news. It’s about love, loss and survival as much as any heartbreak album. It’s about one woman and her fears for her family, but it’s also about where the world is at right now and where it will be in the future.