Many of us are sitting in dread anticipation of the deluge of COVID-19 lockdown records, books and daubings that are surely going to appear in the coming months. Surely few, if any, will be as good as Glory Days, a quick-released 13-track album by Heather Leigh, recorded "with the window open" in her Glasgow flat this past April.
Best known for her solo albums of pedal steel and collaborations with Peter Brötzmann, this record feels like a step into new territory. It’s certainly broad and bold in its sound and scope. ‘All I Do Is Lust’ is like the murmurings of a disco diva’s soul, drifting eternally bereft through a cobwebbed cellar in which pumped men once danced and fucked. Similarly, the clattering electronic rhythms underpinning Leigh’s housey vocal refrain in ‘Take Just A Little’ make it a prototype for a club banger that’ll never get to tickle the dancefloor.
‘Death Switch’ is a delicate tender lo-fi folk song, dreamlike with birdsong and traffic audible in the background, ‘Island’ a simple yet tender work of drone. A quickly-recorded sketch it might be, but this is Heather Leigh’s strongest and most accessible work yet, and bodes well for ever more glorious days next time around.
