Out Cold - Invasion of Love (2013)

"You caught me on a bad night, when all my dreams were lying face down in a cheap motel," sings Out Cold's Simon Aldred, whose pungent songwriting has somehow missed out on the acclaim that garlands contemporaries such as Richard Hawley. That line, from the track Fingers Through the Glass, is typically Aldred: his writing flows with imagery so striking that you can see and feel the "blue-collar romance" he yearns for in Murder Black Corvette. Better known as the frontman of country-noir outfit Cherry Ghost, he's formed Out Cold as a solo project, partly to indulge his love of 1980s dance music, but also to mark his coming out as gay. To the latter end, he regards the track Sorrow as an update of Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy: it may be 2013, but Aldred still encounters "prying eyes and poisoned tongues". The Bronski era also lives on in the plinky, analogue sound, which is the album's musical hallmark; hear it at its best on Shoulder to Shoulder, a bit of soulful lushness that incorporates what sounds like a Bolton pub brawl.