The second release from Leisha Thomas under the Alpha Maid moniker, "CHUCKLE" is nowhere near as upbeat as the title might suggest. Grey and overcast, it ties together a sort of submerged/ Slint-adjacent post-rawk-via-jazz technicality with the DIY grit of '90s Seattle, but roots everything in contemporary London. Thomas's vocals lash out with range: sometimes a disquieting snarl, sometimes a pleasing, echoing hum, but always entrancing.

There's an eccentric spirit that recalls both Dean Blunt and This Heat in its disregard for stasis or formality. She pieces the record together like a sketchbook, cutting-and-pasting samples and editing her instrumentation with gleeful anarchy. It's pop music, just about, but charged with South London's hybrid energy and a distinctly British sense of socio-political unease.

Opener 'MILD WEATHER’ sounds like an inebriated brass band dipped in fuzz, 'NEWLY WOKE & THOUGHT PROVOKED’ could have been lifted straight off Yves Tumor’s PAN debut, all lowercase hooks and bursts of disruption, same with ‘SUM1’ but here skewed into a kind of insular pop reminiscent of La Timpa’s bruised avant-soul. ‘WOWOWOW’, features Diane Abbott being skewered by Today Programme numpties to grinding riffs, while ‘DOGGY' ends the set with a sort of beautiful art-rock coda that’s one part Virginia Astley to a slug of Micachu’s chopped & screwed London Sinfonietta headwreck.

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C.A.N.V.A.S. , 2021