It must be wonderful to ring in the new year over and over. Kill me.

Sam Sparks wishes you a happy new year. Each January since 2023, the Gumshoes singer-songwriter releases a new album. Does titling an album Happy New Year make it the quintessential Gumshoes album? Sure, but what is the quintessential Gumshoes album? Is the quintessential Gumshoes album a good thing? The quintessential Gumshoes album is a charming, harmonious thing, and Happy New Year thrives under this accolade by concentrating on the bountiful sound palettes that enrichened Sam’s entomological ballads on Bugs Forever, and musical fiction on Cacophony.

Happy New Year is ultimately kind-spirited. The album is about loneliness, and was written and recorded by Sam alone in his bedroom. How incredible it is that such “lonely” music achieves such friendliness, that such isolation sounds so bountiful, that bedroom production itself could end up so bountiful. Ocean / Island reaches crazy verticality; a Venezuelan waterfall tiptop of terrifying, fingernail-biting symphony strings. The Canary contains partying hand drums, busy basslines and electrified keys that juxtapose Sam’s warnings – “you will never survive in this town”, melodising amid an incomplete Andalusian cadence – like a neurotic shrew going crazy at a child’s birthday party. City Lights combines strings and piano melodies over its finale, like an advanced version of Layla. There’s No One Out There evokes an enchanted, folky frost from acoustic guitars, teeming drums, shy-but-bluesy pianos, and a vocal harmony that again persuades us to give in to the alacrity that music with such a lonesome background is unthinkably able to produce.

Best tracks – There’s No One Out There – Ocean / Island.

Rating – 7.5 out of 10