Love and its opposite

With the possible exception of This Mortal Coil's Liz Fraser or Portishead's Beth Gibbons there can't be a female voice in UK indie that is more distinctively recognizable or lovelier than that of Tracey Thorn. This is the second solo album from the erstwhile voice of Everything But The Girl (and sometime Massive Attack collaborator) since her self-imposed hiatus for much of the noughties to raise a family. A more sumptuous, gorgeous collection of melancholic songs you'll be hard pressed to find all year. And, as befits a woman nearing her fifties, it's all loosely thematically linked to the challenges of growing older, from a woman's point of view.
With intimate, front-parlour piano and occasionally plucked strings, the plantive opener, 'Oh! The Divorces' sees the singer pondering the infidelities of her ex: "He was a charmer but I wish him bad karma". She gazes back longingly and romantically at her own dream wedding on 'Long White Dress', while on 'Hormones' - a relatively up-tempo number, albeit in a Belle & Sebastian kind of way - she conducts an imagined conversation with a much younger man: "Yours are just kicking in / Mine are just checking out".
A duet with Swedish indie wonder Jens Lekman on Lee Hazlewood's 'Come On Home To Me' is compelling, if a tad bleak, while evocative nostalgia informs 'Kentish Town'. But the highlight here is 'Singles Bar' - a beautifully wrought rumination on the barely-concealed desperation of a middle-aged woman out on the dating scene. "I'm resigned to take what I find, if I can't get what I want," she sings with a knowing word-weariness over an aching melody. But the final line of the song - "Can you tell how long I've been here / Can you smell the fear?" - is devastating in its bluntness, perfectly summing up this beautiful and beguiling record.