Strange Beasts, Bitter Tastes and Welcome Respites

From harrowing to uplifting and from chaos to calm, there's a broad spectrum to choose from this week. Featuring:

Elliott Jack Sansom, Lily Allen, Max Farrington & Le Superhomard, Rosie Carney,    Space Blanket, Waz-U

Pop In The Real World Taster Tracks 2026 (Spotify)

Pop In The Real World Taster Tracks 2026 (YouTube)

Window Tax : Maxwell Farrington & Le Superhomard

Best for : Lovers of the whole retro French pop experience.

It's rare for pictures to capture the feelings generated by music quite as comprehensively as they do on Window Tax, the latest collaboration between Australian baritone Maxwell Farrington and French pop auteurs Le Superhomard.

Let's start with the name Le Superhomard. To save you looking it up, I'll tell you that it translates into English as The Superlobster. It's an unexpected image, a little strange and one that makes you smile even as it feels recognisable and mutant at the same time. Later 'Good Company', the most naturally sweet song here, conjures the sense of old time picnics by the river. The phrasing and lush strings of the songs call to mind the soundtracks of classic French black and white films, seen alone in darkened cinemas. These images come unbidden and add their particular flavour to the songs.

Maxwell Farrington's baritone adds richness to the mix. He keeps a straight face as he sings about brussel sprouts, fish and chips, gap years and supermarkets. There is a baffled, rich, slightly querulous tone to some of his singing that suggests an opera singer in reduced circumstance following an unfortunate occurrence at the conservatoire. Anywhere else it might be irritating. Here it's a perfect accompaniment to the music.

And what a treat the music provides. It bubbles along triggering the warmth of a Summer evening. It is retro, stylish and stylised, full of joie de vivre and je ne sais quoi. It's as French as you can get without featuring an accordion, lush and luxurious. It's that slight feeling of the two partners pulling in different directions that provides the unique appeal of this album.

Together, they have made something as different and entertaininging as Baz Luhrman's 'Moulin Rouge - another project bringing together Australia and France. It has the flirtatious charm of Birkin and Gainsbourg. It's as buoyant as the poppiest version of Air and it is as good as a French version of The Divine Comedy.

This is an engagingly different sound that will bring a smile to your face.

Taster Track : Window Tax

West End Girl : Lily Allen

Best for : Intense fly on the wall relationship dramas set to music

You have to be careful what you wish for with Lily Allen. If you want the candy pop feel of, say 'The Fear' you have to be prepared for the ruthlessly honest and brutal personal sharing of 'West End Girl'.

It takes just a few seconds of 'West End Girl' to be gripped in open mouthed disbelief at the story she's telling. I call it a story, but she calls it her life. Infidelity. Gaslighting. Mental Abuse. Depression. The dangers of relapse. It's all there to a degree that Eastenders would dismiss as unbelievable.

On 'Ruminating' she repeats the question posed to her. "If it has to happen baby do you want to know?" In Allen's case the answer seems to be a resounding "yes". Information is core to the album. Not having it, causes her more worry and grief on 'Just Enough'. The power of the album is revealed in the one sided, silence fuelled telephone conversation of 'West End Girl'. She captures emotional depths you hope you, and those you love, will never need to feel.

It's made palatable only by the light pop touches that make up the music. There's a radio friendly RnB, indie pop feel that may pass you by as you focus on the content of the lyrics, unavoidably positioned centre stage. The lullaby feel to 'Sleepwalking', the therapy group pop and chorus melody to 'Dallas Major', the radio friendly appeal of the music in 'Beg For Me' all help the grit and misery slide down a little easier. It's almost impossible to evaluate this as pop, but the chorus to '4chan Stan' is as sweet as the lyrics are bitter.

'West End Girl' is a much more complex album than the story of an affair. It's as honest and devestating as Lou Reed's 'Berlin' album but dressed in the prettier clothes of Kylie's radio friendly pop.

Lily Allen has found her story and makes it the rawest, most honest and unanswerable response to the traumas in her life..

Taster Track : West End Girl

Sonic Balms For Soothing Souls : Space Blanket

Best for : Messy but exciting trumpet led energy

Anyone coming to Space Blanket seduced by the promise in the album title, may have to reset their expectations. This is an album that is warming up for something momentous and tuning up for something dazzling.

The trumpet is key to the sound. On 'Grief and Gold Sparkles' for example it's taking charge, preparing for action and driving us on. It's the sound of reveille, not the last post. You sense early on that the stored energy contained in 'Space Blanket' will be released before too long.

They say that there is nothing new under the sun but Space Blanket make a fair stab at breaking down the familiar and conventional, reassembling it into something new. They make a wonderful, unfiltered, tangled noise that sounds as if it has been brought to Earth in the slipstream of a spaceship returning from unexplored territories. Along the way they've discovered new sounds, and new combinations of sound to make this something you've not quite heard before. 'Beat Hug' sounds like the kind of chaos that Pigbag might be making now if they were still around.

For all its messiness, this is a happy record with jazzy experimentation high in the mix. It's true that there are also unsettling moments. Everyone has their take on how dream music should sound. Space Blanket's version is convincing, ranging in 'I Saw You In A Dream' from restful through drugged helplessness to capturing the nightmare sense of unseen threats.

As the album progresses it becomes less tethered to grooves and riffs. 'Space Blanket' is securely anchored to its roots, and 'Dimensional Collapse' is a successful attempt to refix its bearings with more than one stabilising, electronic riff to support it.

Space Blanket do not offer a comfort blanket, but a prisoner's blanket to hang from the window and escape from the confines of their cell into freedom.

Taster Track : Dimensional Collapse

Preludes : Dusk Psalms : Waz-u

Best for : Time out from doom scrolling

Thanks to Trump, Putin, Epstein, BlueCo and others, it's easy to get sucked into doom scrolling. This is the music you need to break that cycle.

There's an obvious allusion to church in the title of this collection. It seems to me that, even without faith, church is one of the few spaces left where you can claim quiet and stillness, the time to think and reflect and the chance to reset and reboot. 'Light Unseen : A Major' even starts with something like a small church organ before it grows into something approaching ambient and melodic IDM for the club come down room.

In 'Preludes : Dusk Psalms' you'll find fifteen short, ambient, self contained and fully realised musical fragments. They drift in and out, fuzzily but attractively. They rise and fall with comforting bleeps. If it's hard to distinguish one piece from another, that doesn't matter. The variations will become clearer and more distinct in their own time. What does matter is that, together, they offer you respite. You'll find that it's over all too quickly.

'Silver Wing : A Major' is typically restful, like watching the Northern Lights or fireflies flickering across the lake on a warm Summer's evening. Its trotting rhythm is like a ride home in a horse driven carriage, a treat a million miles removed from M25 gridlock. Gentle and lovely, it stills racing thoughts. 'Parting Gift : B Minor' comes to you as if you were sitting, unseen, listening to someone practising in a cathedral. It is full of the sense of the quiet and space that is this album's great strength.

When you feel that things can't get much worse, listen to this. It will reassure you that the world will keep turning. This is an album that won't shout its strengths and qualities. They'll pass slowly under the radar, destined to be found, like Birds In The Brickwork or Slow Country by just a lucky few. Don't be part of the masses that miss out.

Taster Track : Silver Wing : A Major

Doomsday…Don't Leave Me Here : Rosie Carney

Best for : Fans of big ballads with notes of emotional trauma.

Rosie Carney came to attention with her 2020 lockdown cover of Radiohead's 'The Bends'. It was a revelation, perfectly suited to the times and finding the beauty in its raw ugliness. It's a hard act to follow and, to get to the point, I think that it's an ongoing journey for Carney with this album. With 'The Bends' she created something dreamlike and haunting. 'Doomsday…Don't Leave Me Here' feels like a fresh starting point but we watch it drift towards the mainstream.

This may be more about me than her. It doesn't make for a bad album by any means but one that;s aimed at a different listener. In making something as polished and accomplished as 'Everything Is Wrong' she's lost the indie sense of adventure. In aiming for the big heartfelt and emotional ballads, she may have forgotten that sometimes small is more beautiful and affecting. In writing about feelings and concerns that usually come later in life, something doesn't feel quite true.

But, as I said, it's a journey and there is plenty here that's good. Her vocals are still special. On 'The Evidence' they can enchant with their breathy, ghostly tones. Songs such as 'In My Blue' are suffused with an undeniably Irish other worldly flavour suggesting a Radio 2 version of The Cranberries shrouded in misty mystery. 'Hope Like Hell' is a grubbier sound, the marriage of Radiohead and balladeer that may be her most natural voice. 'Love So Blind' comes close to the kind of melody that speaks to you for life.

So, wrong reviewer, wrong place, wrong time. The fact that Doomsday may just be a staging post shouldn't deter many listeners who are happy to lose themselves in the drama and undoubted quality of the songs.

Taster Track : Hope Like Hell

Night Light : Elliott Jack Sansom

Best for : Music showing how life could and should feel.

Elliott Jack Sansom wrote these short piano pieces to celebrate becoming a father for the first time. They are tender, sentimental and overflowing with love for a baby. It's a musical image for how you hope and imagine family life to be before you encounter the reality.

We have our children and three grandchildren (aged 6, 4 and 1) living with us. Last night, the infant roared for an hour as her parents attempted various means of settling her that didn't involve holding her until they fell asleep. The four year old had a meltdown when her tablet was taken away so she could go to sleep. The six year old bounced between rooms, being helpful, loving every moment of the crisis and hyping himself up for the duration. That's the reality.

Sansom has provided music for Heaven, when life feels more like Hell on Earth. His simple melodies may lack the gravitas of Chopin or Satie, but they make up for it in capturing a fleeting feeling that the day is done and all is right in your world. It's music for when nothing demanding will do.

These pieces contain a massive helping of sentimentality. There's no shame or embarrassment in feeling moved by that. This is music for when you're left alone with memories that catch in your throat and prick you behind the eyes. They're a celebration of the wonder of your child, for those moments when you're beyond exhausted, but filled with pure happiness gazing at innocence personified.

Musically these are restrained, quiet pieces at the lullaby end of chilled. His arrangement of 'Brahm's Lullaby Op 49 No. 4' will be familiar to you even if you think you've never listened to classical music before. It's the sound of a hundred comforting music boxes playing in nurseries across the country. 'Finding My Feet' is in a key that is perhaps closest to pop. It works magic.

Classical purists may dismiss it but for lovers of soothing melodies it's a gift. Hope that it will find you when you most need it.

Taster Track : Finding My Feet