King Hannah - I'm Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me (2022)

King Hannah’s debut full length album, I'm Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me – an inspired melding of American influences as diverse as Red House Painters, Mazzy Star and Smog with more British sources like PJ Harvey and Portishead – offers a stunning showcase of the Liverpool duo’s talent, its dozen songs full of darkness and wit, mesmerizing and thrilling in equal measures. Indeed, titles are rarely more impeccably chosen than the one Wales-born Hannah Merrick and local boy Craig Whittle have chosen. At once a humble clarification and a stubborn challenge, it not only sums up the duo’s single-minded vision and their determination to remain true to themselves, but also offers a glimpse of the wry, knowing humour lurking in the shadows of the record. At times it’s like listening to dusty jukebox 7" singles from the late 1950s played at half speed, and at others like Cowboy Junkies forced to play The Trinity Sessions at knifepoint with a pounding whiskey hangover.