King Creosote & HMS Ginafore - Love + Hate = Hate

FOLK

Providing the finest cross-gender pop union since Bonnie Tyler inveigled Todd Rundgren, this bilateral treat from the Fence Collective king and queen might invoke the mathematical tongue, but this is an album of human equations: limbs are mapped; heartbeats are charted; regrets are calculated. They figure out the things that count.

It’s rife with sublime electro sonnets, squeezebox apologies and down-home odes, but don’t overlook the Slipknot homage (whose ‘People I Shit’ is herewith superseded by melodic badinage and algebraic repartee); nor the insanely unsung talent of Ginafore: ‘Hare and the Tortoise’ measures a punk-baiting 56 seconds, and equals genius.