Niall Summerton
What Am I Made Of?
(Tiny Library Records)
★★★★

INTROSPECTIVE and subdued, the debut album from Leeds-based singer-songwriter Niall Summerton is a real treat.

Apparently his childhood hero was Nick Drake, which makes sense when you hear the acoustic guitar sounds here. I also hear echoes of other melancholic folky artists such as Elliott Smith and The Clientele.

“I’m sick of trying / I’m only as good as the next man / I’m done with trying / I’m only a human, dying”, he intones on the opening track.

Playing Dumb, a song about coming to terms with loss and the grieving process of a relationship, and recorded on his dad’s classical guitar through a vintage ’70s reel-to-reel, has a hazy summer feeling, while the closer, Oh, To Waste My Time! ends with some lovely lonesome saxophone playing from Tom Kettleton.

A hugely promising first record, I’m already looking forward to what Summerton does next.

Boygenius
The Record
(Interscope)
★★★★

A SUPERGROUP made up of supremely talented US singer-songwriters Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers, Boygenius’s full-length debut feels like a big cultural moment, with the indie rock torch not just passed on but wrestled out of the hands of often entitled male artists, including some outed abusers.

The Record is much more of a cohesive set than their well-received 2018 self-titled EP. 

Full of intimate details and melancholic snippets of relationship lows (and some highs), all three feel like they are working at the top of their lyrical game. 

Baker contributes the crunching rocker $20, Bridgers the romantically confused Emily I’m Sorry and Dacus the band-in-joke track Leonard Cohen. 

These songs are going to be sung back to the band word for word during their extensive tour of North America and Europe this year.

Music to live your life to.

Molina, Talbot, Lofgren and Young
All Roads Lead Home
(Reprise)
★★★

AS Neil Young’s on-off backing band since the late 1960s, Crazy Horse are a cultural institution.

The old timers have been busy of late, recording three albums with the Canadian-American singer-songwriter over the last four years. And now it turns out each member of the group – Ralph Molina (drums), Billy Talbot (bass) and Nils Lofgren (guitars) – was recording their own music, working with different musicians, during the pandemic.

All Roads Lead Home is made up of three songs apiece, and Young himself throwing in a marvellous live acoustic version of Song Of The Seasons from 2021’s Barn.

Their trademark swirling guitar jams are traded for more focused mid-tempo rock songs. Lofgren’s yearning vocals are a welcome surprise on You Will Never Know, as is Talbot’s pensive, life-affirming Cherish.

A refreshing set, especially for dedicated fans of the Horse.