Keaton Henson: Kindly Now review – more early-hours anguish

“Who needs comfortable love?” runs one of the choruses here, signalling that singer-songwriter Keaton Henson’s romantic outlook has changed little since his breakthrough album Birthdays. Fans of that record will find much to love on this one too. There’s a similar mood of early-hours anguish as Henson’s vocals drift over minimal arrangements for piano and guitar or fuller orchestral passages. But at times his tremulous croon lets him down, sounding a little too mellifluous for the agonies he wishes to convey. It’s on less conventional tracks, where his voice gets looped (March) or lost among electronic and orchestral textures (Gabe), that the desolate atmosphere really starts to take hold.