A Quickening

Former lead singer in noughties indie rock outfit The Maccabees, Orlando Week’s first project after his band split up in 2017 The Gritterman was a collaboration with UK comedian Paul Whitehouse about a lonely ice-cream man who grits the roads during the winter months. While 2020’s A Quickening was a far more straightforward proposition thematically, it maintained much of that record’s gentle melancholy. This time around, Weeks’ lyrics focused on the uncertainties and anxieties of becoming a father for the first time. That such subject matter didn’t slip into mawkishness was thanks chiefly to the tentative quiver of Week’s vocals, which were cast in a delicate sound-world that owed more to the multi-layered textures of Talk Talk and the Blue Nile than the frenetic guitars of his previous band. 2022’s Hop Up added more polish and certainty, but at the expense of some of this record’s naïve charm.