Aloe Blacc - Lift Your Spirit

Ex-stockbroker Aloe Blacc is a one-hit-wonder twice over, first via his 2011 recession anthem ‘I Need A Dollar’, then with last year’s banjo-fueled Avicii collaboration ‘Wake Me Up’. Though the latter was a global number one, its twanging cadences and bare-faced Mumford-isms baffled fans of the Swedish EDM DJ, who are reported to have booed whenever he interrupted his set of bangers to haul Blacc on stage.

Clearly the opprobrium hasn’t caused Blacc many lost nights. On his third album, he doubles down on folksy crossover, his songs basted in acoustica, singing voice metastasised into a chirpy croon. This is Blacc’s major label debut and nobody’s taking chances. There’s production by Pharrell (not that you’d notice, being honest) and DJ Khalil (Eminem, Jay Z, Pink): together they couch Blacc’s earthy voice in relentlessly backwards-glancing soul arrangements. An Avicii-less ‘Wake Me Up’ is probably the highlight – if you found that track’s campfire sentimentality a chore be warned, there’s plenty more where that came from.