East London-via-Liverpool singer-songwriter Lein Sangster (previously of KIT and Bad Anorak 404) presents their solo debut album In Spite of Everything, The Stars. An album of beautifully crafted and elegant pop laments with effortless melody and flying hooks, moving from the melancholic to the celebratory and effortlessly weaving lush hues of jazz, folk, soul, RnB, and even some Spaghetti Western and mariachi inspired tones.
New single ‘History Repeatin’’ is the album’s soul song, and a romantic one (albeit told in Sangster’s gritty realism style that can be heard throughout the album). Inspired by their love of Northern Soul and 60’s RnB it has a distinctive drum beat unique to the song which explores in essence second chances and the age-old question of whether people can ever really change?
Lein Sangster’s debut solo offering In Spite of Everything, The Stars was recorded in part at Sangster’s studio in their old home in Liverpool, and at the city’s Whitewood Studios which they call “an analogue dream.” It’s warm and immediate, as if Sangster were sat next to the listener on a sofa and sharing their most intimate thoughts and stories.
The album recalls the writer Paul du Noyer’s quote that Liverpudlian musicians had “an innate ability to turn to rage into beauty,” with Sangster introducing us to characters and their often-challenging life tales in blinding technicolour. They’re songs of people and their truth, including Sangster’s own, presented in a way that is both widescreen and intimate, and spanning unrequited love, the trauma of a life lived poverty and the unwelcome gentrification of London, a friend’s release from prison, death and grief, and the struggles of growing up queer and the path to finding oneself.
In Spite Of Everything, The Stars:
- Why Didn’t I Say
- History Repeatin’
- Beautiful Stars
- Me And This Ghost
- End Of An Era
- Summer Rain
- Minus One
- She’s Comin’ Home
- Library Fines
- Sad Songs
- Funeral Song
