Album: Jane Weaver - Flock

Flock ends with “Solarised”, a glorious five-plus minutes excursion into retro-futurist pop with the artistic smarts of Saint Etienne and Stereolab. Snappy, toe-tapping drums and bubbly, funky bass guitar move it along. “Stages of Phases” is another winner. Built around a stomping glam-rock chassis, it's sense of otherness is shared by “Solarised”.

Jane Weaver’s sixth album proper (there are also collaborations, soundtracks and live/remix sets) and the follow-up to 2017’s Modern Kosmology isn’t a full-on lunge towards conventionality, but it’s her first brush with dance-pop – albeit on the art-rock terms established by her pivotal 2010 album The Fallen By Watchbird. Another change is the absence of the Hawkwind edge she’s had since then. The funky “Pyramid Schemes” would never have sat well on any of her previous albums. As well as parallels with Dots and Loops-era Stereolab, especially on “Modern Reputation” and the title track, the Prince-ish “The Revelation of Super Visions” pushes towards the angularity of Field Music and St Vincent. Overall, the unifying factor is Weaver’s voice rather than the atmosphere created or the styles embraced.

Flock’s predecessors were 2019’s patchy Loops In The Secret Society, a live recasting of elements of Modern Kosmology and 2015’s The Amber Light, and the soundtrack collaboration Fehérlófia. Both must now be seen as place markers: as a means – whether consciously or unconsciously – to create space for what was coming next.

And what has come next is Jane Weaver’s most varied, most vigorous album to date. Hopefully, she’ll be able to showcase this exuberance in a live setting.

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