The singer led a benefit concert in the city and visited hospitalised fans and though there is no direct reference to that appalling event here, there is a meditative, melancholy air, lyrically and musically, which speaks volumes.
She is an extraordinarily sweet, skilful and agile singer – arguably the finest female voice in pop – and on tracks like raindrops (An Angel Cried) and Goodnight n’ Go, it simply soars.
But there is no sense of fussiness or over-elaboration in her vocals, only an impression that, at just 25 years old, a career of Streisand-like excellence may well be beckoning.
Laurel Dogviolet ★★★★✩ (Counter Records)
‘All I’ve been dreaming of is you,’ sings Laurel Arnell-Cullen over and again on the fractured ballad Sun King, and in that one line, her voice twisting and turning through raw authority to rasping vulnerability the whole power of this extraordinary album seems to be concentrated.
Twenty-four years old, from Southampton and with a string of impressive on-line and EP singles already to her name, Laurel may just have made the debut album of the year.
Backed by hard-edged guitar, rumbling bass and drums that seems to shadow every shifting nuance of her vocal, she emerges, full-fledged, as a glorious cross between Patti Smith and Amy Winehouse, songs like All Star and South Coast treading an uneasy line between passion and fear, hope and disaster.
Brilliant.
The Lemon Twigs Go To School ★★★★✩ (4AD)
That maverick rock wizard Todd Rundgren makes a guest appearance on the Twigs’ second album is entirely fitting.
If any performers are heirs to Rundgren’s musical eccentricities it’s brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario.
Following on from their superb 2016 debut, Do Hollywood, the Long Island duo return with our old friend “the rock musical”.
Forget Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School Of Rock however, this one comes brimming with the same head- spinning brew of psychedelia, ragtime jazz and Harry Nilsson-style balladry that made that last album so irresistible.
Charting the growing pains of Shane, a chimpanzee raised as a schoolboy, Go To School is a 15-track gem that ranges from stoned theatricals (The Student Becomes The Teacher) through a full-on production number (Rock Dreams), cheesy bossa-nova (The Bully) and a ballad straight out of a 1940s film weepie (The Lesson).
It’s a blast from start to finish.