Rides The Sky is Jack Flanagan's emotional and confessional rebirth

A near decade in the making, Rides The Sky is a culmination of such emotional turbulence, zeroing in on the life-changing events that have accompanied the singer-songwriter’s journey so far. Wrought with material developed prior to and alongside his membership of the Mystery Jets, the death of his best friend Rob Skipper (The Holloways) and enlistment to the former through Blaine Harrison would mark epochal chapters that find lyrical resonance in the album’s twelve tracks. In parallel, Flanagan skews between psychedelia, power-pop and Americana via modern segues, the old and new almost one and the same, cut without transition – stamped with an in-the-moment sense of recollection and introspection.

“Curses” rolls with this shape-shifting strength from the outset; a lysergic ‘60s daydream, prefacing a fusion of Elliott Smith references and ‘70s guitar interludes, whereas the mystically framed “Skyhorse x Skyhorse” opts for state-slinking sonics fractured with nu-rave-leaning electro leers. Rides The Sky upturns the staid in these sharp about-turns, a choppy-paced pull that is equally applied to the White Album-inflected “Unbelievable” and Bolan-esque “Lately”, reaching to famed songbooks as vectors of influence without becoming mere sendups.

The country-folk of “Blue Canoe” drifts in a detached private orbit of its own, juxtaposed with the slipstreaming Hail to the Thief-evoking electronics of “Try”, while “Why Am I Only Here” reverts to sunset-sheened guitar harmonies, breezing between the tones of Big Star and Gene Clark.

Viewed through its biographical prism, Rides The Sky takes on vivid significance – a record that has its origins in loss, renewal and the stages in between. Flanagan matches this substance with a varied and dynamic range that doesn’t relent in its transcendent footwork.