• John Grant – Grey Tickles, Black Pressure

    A record whose title essentially means Middle-Aged Nightmares doesn’t sound like a particularly fun prospect. That said, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is such a wonderful, euphemistic description of its subject, layering the deeply troubling topic in a layer of abstraction and disassociation. This idea is mirrored in its eerie, yet cheerful, album cover; a man dressed in WASPy attire, his eyes replaced with inhuman, piercing white beams of light. This balancing act between sinister and serene is to be expected from the likes of John Grant, the former Czars frontman, whose previous two records stand as some of the finest…