Slow Club: Complete Surrender review – powered by heartache and ambition

Those who've seen Slow Club live will know that Rebecca Taylor belts out big notes with the gale force of a Brit School graduate at an Andrew Lloyd Webber casting. This diva guise may be quashed with self-deprecating quips on stage, but on record – especially this one, their third – Taylor performs with both the rawness of heartache and an obvious hunger for fame. This new sense of ambition is crucial for a once-whimsical band, and is reflected in their banishment of nu-folk tweeness in favour of bombastic Motown soul. Dependable People and Things That I'm Sure Of mourn lost love with the tearful conviction of Sinead O'Connor at a Taylor Swift sleepover ("I can run further than I could before, I can laugh louder, I can dance until I'm sore!"), and for every bit of Morecambe bingo-hall glamour (Suffering Me, Suffering You) there's something devastatingly beautiful – such as Everything Is New, the greatest song Slow Club have ever written.