That old chestnut about how some films make you want to take up smoking also applies to records. Going by the divinely named Alexandra Savior's debut, you'd easily get through 20 a night walking the streets.
File under music noir, it's full of in-a-lonely-place allure with Savior setting her stall out as a cool storyteller -"Staring through the windows of a wig store, crying through the credits of a show she's seen many times before.."; "Dress me like the front of a casino, push me down another rabbit hole..." - whose vocal clarity offsets the murky matters of the heart.
A former guest star on The Last Shadow Puppets' Miracle Aligner, she has Alex Turner at the controls, where the Puppets master and Arctic Monkeys man is joined by producer-in-demand James Ford (the aforementioned bands, Florence, Foals and Depeche Mode). Together, the three of them have come up with an album that works as a chaser to the Monkeys' AM and which celebrates the age-old seductiveness of vinyl crackle.
If there are moments where Savior strays a little too close to the Del Rey district, you have to remember that, at 21, she's still marking out her own turf. She doesn't have all the time in the world, but unlike some of the characters here, it is on her side. And as the line "You've got my fingers crossed, you've got me so intrigued..." shows, her gifts for telepathy are already fully developed.
