Something Beginning With L

Beautiful Ground
4/5
It may not be the most suitable look for the summer, but this season we’re digging layers. Layers of chiming female vocals, searing guitar squall, stalking riffs, skittering percussion and swelling, electro-speckled sweetness of the sort you haven’t heard since the mid-’90s – all unified by a cool, brittle beauty last manifested this beguilingly in the sensual outer corners of Elastica’s The Menace. Lucy Parnell and Jen Macro both share the sort of guitar prowess you’d expect from members of Graham Coxon’s Power Acoustic Ensemble. But it’s their unselfconsciously gorgeous twin vocals, delicately wrapped in a double helix of harmonies, that make this debut album so transfixing. Recorded in third member Jon Clayton’s converted Brixton paper mill (with a guest spot from PJ Harvey’s drummer Rob Ellis), Beautiful Ground is awash with atmosphere, whether they’re singing about Christmas presents from Nana or the comedown from ‘Last Night’s Party’. Kick off your Cons and come in, the water’s L…