Liana Flores
Flowers Of The Soul
(Verve/Fiction Records)
★★★★

STARTING out performing and releasing music on YouTube, it’s been a meteoritic rise for Liana Flores. In 2022 the young singer-songwriter from Norwich tweeted that she was handing in her undergraduate dissertation. Just two years later, with her wonderful debut album out in the wild, she will soon embark on a tour of North America, mainland Europe and Britain.

While I’m not keen on national stereotypes, that Flores is British-Brazilian makes a lot of sense when you listen to her music, which seems effortlessly to blend breezy bossa nova with the sensibility of late ’60s/early ’70s jazzy English folk artists like Pentangle, Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake.

The ethereal, shimmering sound may be a little too much for some people. But many more are going to fall hard for this charmingly irresistible record that will soundtrack their summer.

Hamish Hawk
A Firmer Hand
(So Recordings)
★★★★

I’M a huge fan of Hamish Hawk’s 2023 album Angel Numbers — my Morning Star review said it confirmed him “as one of the most exciting artists in British indie music today” — and his new record is another hit.

Produced by Rod Jones (Idlewild), the set of literate, darkly playful songs considers the Scottish singer-songwriter’s relationships with men — friends, lovers, colleagues and family — and feelings such as guilt, shame and repression. Unsurprisingly, he has talked about Morrissey being a key influence.

Opener Juliet As Epithet sets the tone with its ice-cold synths and confessional lyrics about smothering chances, a man “so Goddamn handsome he makes me anxious” and the lonely line “I’m just the open secret no-one’s ever gonna blow.”

With his deep baritone and pop sensibilities, file Hawk alongside Neil Hannon, Franz Ferdinand and Scott Walker. 

Meshel Ndegeocello
No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin
(Blue Note)
★★★★

INSPIRED by James Baldwin, in particular his essay The Fire This Time, and released to coincide with the centennial of the African-American author’s birth, No More Water is a hugely ambitious, intensely political album.

US musician Meshel Ndegeocello leads the show, running through jazz, soul, funk, hip hop and rock, employing several vocalists and spoken-word pieces, including a French language track.

Raise The Roof stands out on first listen — a heart-stopping, Black Lives Matter-inspired monologue full of righteous anger from Jamaican poet and activist Staceyann Chin that name checks Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and Trayvon Martin.

“Almost a decade-and-a-half into the 21st century and race relations in America is still a fucking cauldron,” she spits about the white supremacist power structure. “Get up, stand up … It is time to raise the roof on these motherfuckers!”