Artist: Paul Heaton, Jacqui Abbott
Album: N.K-Pop
Genre: Indie Pop, Indie Rock
Release Date: 2022
Audio Format:: FLAC (tracks) 24 bit, 48 kHz
Duration: 43:40
Total Tracks: 12
Total Size: 529 MB

Tracklist:

1-1. Paul Heaton – The Good Times (04:39)
1-2. Paul Heaton – Too Much For One (Not Enough For Two) (02:44)
1-3. Paul Heaton – Who Built The Pyramids? (04:26)
1-4. Paul Heaton – I Drove Her Away With My Tears (02:50)
1-5. Paul Heaton – When The World Would Actually Listen (02:49)
1-6. Paul Heaton – Still (04:35)
1-7. Paul Heaton – I Ain’t Going Nowhere This Year (03:55)
1-8. Paul Heaton – Sunny Side Up (02:53)
1-9. Paul Heaton – Baby It’s Cold Inside (03:41)
1-10. Paul Heaton – New Fella (02:59)
1-11. Paul Heaton – My Mother’s Womb (03:48)
1-12. Paul Heaton – His Master’s Game (04:15)

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Paul Heaton’s enormous talent as a songwriter was recognized at the prestigious 2022 Ivor Awards, where renowned author and radio DJ Stuart Maconie presented him with the long overdue award for “Outstanding Song Collection”. Heaton is one of the UK’s most successful songwriters, with around 15 million albums sold.

Jacqui Abbott was the lead singer with The Beautiful South from 1994 to 2000, singing many of their biggest hits including “Rotterdam,” “Perfect 10,” “Don’t Marry Her” and “Dream A Little Dream.” Together they have released four highly acclaimed albums as a duo. N.K-Pop is the fifth studio album from Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott and follows their previous studio album “Manchester Calling” which reached #1 in the UK in March 2020Released in early 2020, the ambitious double album Manchester Calling was the duo’s fourth U.K. Top Five hit and first to go all the way to number one. The follow-up, N.K-Pop, finds Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott returning to the studio with producer John Williams and the same backing band. A like-minded, generally uplifting, uptempo set (this time comprising a still generous 12 songs), it even opens with a track called “The Good Times.” Bright but lyrically wistful, the song looks back — in character — upon the life of a formative sweetheart, while touching briefly upon disco, reggae, and arena rock within a bouncy pop framework. Heaton and Abbott are well known for drawing on a variety of 20th century influences, and “Too Much for One (Not Enough for Two)” moves on to a gospel-tinged boogie, while “When the World Would Actually Listen” delves into strings-enhanced ’70s Motown. The latter song stays in line with the album’s danceable tempos, snapping fingers along to lines like “There’s an own goal from the halfway line in all of us.” The pair do slow things down a couple times, including on the vintage prom waltz “Who Built the Pyramids” (“Made it imperfect/A little like me”) and on melancholy outlier and album highlight “Still.” Appearing midway through the sequencing, “Still” is a cinematic ballad whose lyrical melody illuminates lyrics about losing a child. (Heaton works with the charity Sands, which promotes research on the causes of stillbirths and neonatal deaths.) N.K-Pop resumes its otherwise brisk pace on the chugging, locomotive-like “I Ain’t Going Nowhere,” whose bluesy clarinet and twangy guitar and vocals evoke “a wanderlust that just can’t be denied” — except that travel has been canceled. Among the remaining entries is an odd takeoff on “Baby It’s Cold Outside” that references everything from Alcatraz and STDs to Top of the Pops, as if to prove that Heaton and Abbott can make a wry pop ditty out of just about anything. – Marcy Donelson