Think of Flashback Romance as hotly-tipped singer Lucy Mason concluding some unfinished business: four of the nine tracks on Mason’s debut LP appeared last year, including her fragile re-rendering of Radiohead’s ‘High And Dry’ and the sparse, dreamy, glacial build of ‘Out Of The Blue’ that achingly opens the record.

Produced with Jess Ellen, Mason might have perfect pop poise – a voice that could melt the heart of even the stoniest disposition and songs that nod to both soulful quarters and the casually anthemic – but her conceit is to wrap emotional outpourings like the mournful ‘3am’ in delicate arrangements enriched by vintage analogue synth warmth, hazy reverb and atypical rhythms.

‘Sunday’ is a profound highlight at the album’s centre. Here, Mason’s voice carries a flat, regretful quality draped with echoing piano and a barely-there architecture of beats that opens out unexpectedly into a buzzing electronic pop conclusion blessed by an irrepressible, muted rapture. The album concludes with ‘Kids That Night’, the curious highlight of the tracks that appeared last year. The song is beautifully, cruelly, affecting, offering a wistful view back into carefree days of innocence before life got in the way and heaped unwanted responsibilities on your callow shoulders.

Flashback Romance by Lucy Mason is self-released on February 15 2019.

Words: Mat Smith
(c) 2019 Further.