LoneLady - Nerve Up

(Warp)

LoneLady might be coming on all Manchester warehouse post-punk or whatever, but she’s best when spitting soul asides and rewiring Gwen Guthrie’s ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ on But the Rent’ – as she somehow does, and boy, it works, on her debut album’s dancefloor-agitating title track.

Nerve Up’s stripped-back diatribes and edgy axe-mastery reinforce LoneLady, aka Julie Campbell’s authenticity, (it’s telling that this particular female solo artist is on electronic powerhouse Warp); and there are plenty of sonic acknowledgements (Grace Jones, ESG, PiL, Prince, Wire) to buttress her self-styled ‘army of one’. But her best, it feels, is yet to come.