Emerging fully formed after the most impressive and hype-filled build-up since the xx, Manchester’s WU LYF (World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation) may well be at their peak with debut album GO TELL FIRE TO THE MOUNTAIN (Liberation/Universal), but what a peak! Vocalist Ellery Roberts boasts an unintelligible throaty growl that makes Tom Waits sound like a choirboy and could easily be taken as a gimmick were it not for great hook-laden epic songs that are beautifully recorded and skilfully played. Whether their brand of heavy pop will have any legs beyond this is questionable, but for right now this is it.
Curiously, by avoiding the usual trappings of making an album, UK-born, Hawaii- based veteran spinner DJ Harvey has produced a rather stunning one. HARVEY PRESENTS LOCUSSOLUS (International Feel) is essentially the tracks from his three previous singles with added versions and premier league remixology from Andrew Weatherall, Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas and Emperor Machine. Drawing on his somewhat unusual attitude and experience, Harvey constructs a low-slung mixture that spans from dubbed-out disco to slyly vocalised eclecticism with consummate ease, comfortably vindicating the name-pinching from Raymond Roussel’s surreal classic Locus Solus, and then some.