Albums of the week: Steve Lacy, Yard Act, Tricky, Charles Lloyd

Oh Yeah?

Steve Lacy

(RCA)

Confessional music treads a fine line: if it is not specific enough, it risks being bland; if it is too specific, it risks alienating the listener. Steve Lacy’s third solo album too often falls into the latter category. It sticks almost entirely to accounts of troublesome relationships and the struggles of desire, but lacks the inherent poetry of the better examples of the genre – Joni Mitchell’s Blue, say, or Frank Ocean’s Blonde.

It’s a shame, because the music here is typically imaginative, building on the alternative R&B Lacy honed as part of the Internet. The racy Nice Shoes and brooding Pure Colour, featuring Erykah Badu, are highlights, and the hazy acoustic guitars and vocal harmonies on Show You Me wouldn’t be out of place on one of Panda Bear’s Beach Boys-inspired albums.

On the single Is It Cool, with its brief turn from SZA, Lacy sings: “I cheat every now and again / That was hard for me to admit / I really won’t commit.” Therein lies the problem: the unfocused lyrics are an unhappy marriage to such accomplished music. The otherwise perfectly serviceable Doom ends with Lacy repeatedly singing: “Blah, blah, blah, blah / Shut the fuck up.” While listening to Oh Yeah?, some might share that sentiment. Lewis Huxley

You’re Gonna Need A Little Music

Yard Act

(Island)

Given the impressive live reputation Yard Act have built since being freed from their pandemic beginnings, it’s surprising that You’re Gonna Need A Little Music – the Leeds quartet’s third record in five years – is their first to be recorded with the band all in the same room. But the switch from laptop to live music is undoubtedly at the heart of this bolder and brilliant venture. From the snarling cacophony of Empty Pledges to the 00s indie rattle of Cherophobe Rock, these tracks are either so locked-in or so unpredictable that they could only have been made by musicians who’ve come to understand each other completely.

Yard Act were initially hailed for frontman James Smith’s witty storytelling, but here he takes a small step back, no longer the main attraction. There’s still plenty of smart wordsmithery on Tall Tales, which tells of moral bankruptcy through Robin Hood analogies, or as he spits out Thrill Of The Chase’s climax at a pace most rappers wouldn’t manage. But You’re Gonna Need A Little Music feels, above all, like the work of a band merging to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Lisa Wright

Different When It’s Silent

Tricky

(False Idols)

In 2019 Tricky’s daughter Mina Mazy Topley-Bird died by suicide aged 24. The following year the Bristolian rapper released Fall to Pieces, on which he filtered his grief through the voice of the Polish singer Marta Złakowska, before plunging into a series of projects under different aliases. Different When It’s Silent, then, is the first Tricky record in six years, and the first to properly reckon with his loss.

To do so he has recruited an old friend, Mitch Sanders, whose plangent falsetto pairs well with Tricky’s weed-smoke-through-gravel vocals. The tone is set by I Still See Me There, on which a grungy bass riff soundtracks a desperate repeated plea: “Don’t leave me here / I still see me there / With you.” Much of Tricky’s recent work has had a sketchy quality but here the use of guitars alongside minimalist beats has – in the rock of I’m Yours and the shoegazey So Cold – produced something closer to finished pop songs.

Tricky’s mourning for Topley-Bird is felt in every line, although on the final track he spits: “I sing for my daughter” with more anger than acceptance. Oddly, it is a cover version – of Dope Lemon’s Marinade, with rewritten lyrics – that recalls the surreal poetry of Tricky’s early work, otherwise missing from these cris de coeur. But sometimes the deepest pain demands the plainest words. Tom Gatti

Sangam and Friends

Charles Lloyd

(Blue Note)

Now 88, the garlanded maestro of the tenor sax has been tidying up his past. His previous album, Figure in Blue, paid homage to early influences including Duke Ellington and his late friend and collaborator, the tabla player Zakir Hussain. Here Lloyd returns to 2009, when he first played in India at Hussain’s bequest alongside the drummer Eric Harland. Their trio was known as Sangam: a confluence of rivers. With a slew of local talents on vocals, sitar, sarangi and bansuri, an album was recorded at Mumbai’s Nirvana Studios but never completed – a mission later fulfilled by Sangam at home in California.

The Mumbai session has more presence, with Lloyd at his most lyrical on The Blessing, but the two parts of the record prove complementary: a live version of Tagore from California is, like its poetic inspiration Rabindranath Tagore, dreamy, while Jai Ganga is pungent and propulsive. Tabla and drums may seem an unnecessary percussive double act, but they merge seamlessly, with Hussain’s speedy hands inspiring Lloyd’s most arresting flights of fancy. His playing remains poised, joyous, questing. He has long been under the spell of Eastern mysticism; truly, as he put it here, an Eternal Dreamer. Neil Spencer

One to watch: Westside Cowboy

Sometimes all you really need is a great melody. And Westside Cowboy – a bright new four-piece comprising Jimmy Bradbury, Reuben Haycocks, Aoife Anson-O’Connell and Paddy Murphy – have plenty that are just waiting to get stuck in your head. After winning Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent competition last year, touring with Black Country, New Road and Geese, and releasing two whip-smart EPs, the indie quartet are gearing up for a busy summer in support of their debut album, It Goes On. And they’re taking all their tunes with them.

The band met at the Royal Northern College of Music and the quality of their craft is audible. Just rewatch them perform their lead single Kick Stones (The Boys) on Later… With Jools Holland from last month. The guitars ring out like a tangle of chimes, before Murphy’s thundering drumming escalates proceedings into a gnarly rock affair.

It’s the band’s willingness to sing hard that feels especially exciting when so many recent new groups prefer a mumble. Bradbury, Haycocks and Anson-O’Connell share the vocals – often involving beautiful, surprising lyrics, such as “And the rain sounds like bells, the plastic covered cars swim totally fine” – between them, with harmonies a-plenty. It’s early to call it, but Westside Cowboy may just be 2026’s best breakout band. Ellen Peirson-Hagger

It Goes On is out on Island Records on 21 August. Westside Cowboy play festivals including Tramlines and Green Man, before touring the UK from 24 November

Photographs by James Winstanley, GusVanSant, James Winstanley, Steve Gullick, D. Darr, Clémentine Schneidermann