Spectrum

His first solo album, recorded as Spacemen 3 were falling apart, on Spectrum Sonic Boom sounds forlorn, drowning in sadness. There are pleas for redemption – the heartbreaking opener, “Help Me Please” – that sit alongside paeans to lost friends (“Angel”), funereal drones (“If I Should Die”), and covers of classics from Ray Charles (“Lonely Avenue”) and Suicide (“Rock’n’Roll is Killing My Life”). Charles, Rev and Vega – those are good parameters for what Sonic Boom is doing here, taking minimal, pulsing analogue keys, and using them as bedrock for the kind of reductionist rock song that he pioneered with his Spacemen 3. But it’s also a deeply personal album, one that’s lost in its own blues.