Lord Cut-Glass - Lord Cut-Glass

It’s taken a while to get round to it, but five years since his sometime band The Delgados split, and following collaborations with Aidan Moffat, Alasdair Gray and David Shrigley, Alun Woodward is finally making his album debut under this new alias. Delgados fans won’t be disappointed: this is a record that revels joyfully in sonic possibility while barely disguising an undercurrent of cynicism.

Woodward pines for dreams which are ‘spent like next month’s bills’ on the waltz-timed oddity ‘Even Jesus Couldn’t Love You’ and carves an elegiac love-hate affair in ‘Look After Your Wife’. The album sparkles with orchestral flourishes and even the odd Spaghetti Western soundtrack influence, but most of all its lyrical execution is convincingly spirited.

(Chemikal Underground)