ELIZA CARTHY

Neptune HemHem

Battered and bruised by life, Eliza Carthy has distilled a decade of passion and pain into a remarkably cohesive album of original songs. If some people get the face they deserve as they age, then Carthy’s got the voice she deserves, shot through with a rich mix of melancholy and ragged-edged, visceral energy. Blood On My Boots, the foot-stomping curtain raiser, promises a murderous cabaret, but instead she delivers a series of (sometimes surreal) vignettes, many of them unashamedly domestic. Hot on the heels of last year’s duet album, Gift, with her mother, Norma Waterson, and three years after the much-anticipated Dreams Of Breathing Underwater, Carthy may still be pondering matters aquatic, but on Neptune, she’s emerged from the depths with a reflective collection that simply refuses to be boxed in. A welcome return to top form. See eliza-carthy.com

SIOBHÁN LONG

Download tracks: Revolution, Thursday