GAVIN FRIDAY

Ecce Homo (BMG)

Thirteen years after the last solo album from singer, composer and artist Gavin Friday, he returns with Ecce Homo: his most emotionally charged and electronic album yet, its songs fuelled by betrayal, despair, love and loss. Friday, a founding member of Dublin post-punk band The Virgin Prunes, started work on this album with Soft Cell’s Dave Ball after the pair collaborated on a cover of Suicide’s Ghost Rider, and its title track and lead single maintains some of that aesthetic: an electro beast with a hard-hitting accompanying video that captures a world turning in on itself.

Amaranthus (Love Lies Bleeding) captures the rage and sadness of grief with its aggressive beat wizardry, Lady Esquire is a standout glam stomper, and When The World Was Young is up there with previous Friday earworm Angel.  Ecce Homo is an album which grabs you by the lapels and refuses to let go. 

words DAVID NOBAKHT