Angels & Queens, Gabriels, CD

Frontman Jacob Lusk is nothing short of incredible on the trio's debut album, a powerful half-hour of top-tier songwriting that proves Gabriels are far more than soul revivalists. - This album highlights that Gabriels, having drafted Kendrick Lamar collaborator Sounwave as producer, are far more than revivalists. He helps craft a sound that feels entirely of the moment, and not merely because there's a constant, nagging sense of tumult and foreboding lurking behind even it's prettiest songs. There's certainly nothing retro about a track such as The Blind, where the beat is made of a stumbling, clattering array of samples, Lusk's vocal is drenched in backwards reverb and the piano and strings battle for space with droning, overcast synths. The orchestration that opens To the Moon and Back could have transported there directly from a 1940s jazz ballad, but it's swiftly replaced by a cavernous-sounding swirl of massed vocals and an insistent, cyclical bass riff. 2023 release.