Album Review: Ness by Hayden Thorpe

Mysterious former Ministry Of Defence site Orford Ness provides the inspiration for ex-Wild Beasts singer’s third solo album Orford Ness is a deeply strange place. The Natural Trust site on the Suffolk coast - a shingle spit just down from the Sizewell B power station - was once home to the Ministry of Defence. During both World Wars and the Cold War, they carried out mysterious weapons development while looking to boost Britain's arms capabilities.

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When going on a sonic journey into the wild, who better to chaperone than former Wild Beasts frontman , Hayden Thorpe. Six years after the disbandment of the acclaimed art-rock quartet, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has since firmly established himself as a solo artist, thanks to the stark balladry of ‘Diviner’ and the synth-soaked majesty of ‘Moondust For My Diamond’ . Now back with his third solo album Ness, an adaptation of author Robert Macfarlane's book of the same name , Hayden has successfully crafted his most magical and ambitious project yet.

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Most notably, 'Ness', the third solo album from former Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe, is not a record which can be easily divorced from its context: namely using the words and narrative of Robert Macfarlane's 2019 book of the same name about Orford Ness, a former nuclear testing site on the Suffolk coast. At its best, this allows Hayden to delve into cinematic territory, such as in the (melo)dramatic 'WTF Is That', or 'As', where Hayden and collaborator Kerry Andrew's vocals tangle around both each other and a carefully introduced clarinet to mesmeric effect. 'It', too, charms in a similar way, contrasting easy listening sounds with uneasy arrangement.

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