Coves - Soft Friday [Vinyl]

Basements hung with fairy lights, 60s tape reels spinning antique spools, drums dusted with white powder. Gritty riffs and psych rock washes slither beneath airy, blissed-blank Nico vocals spinning spectral tales of shattered romance. A beautifully ruined pair – he a leather-clad glowering guitar phantom, she a glacial, broken bombshell – blow glitter at each other through the flashes from old cameras.

This is the world of Coves, a classic psych-garage aesthetic vacuum-sealed forever in one time, one space. The space is Castle Grayskull, the live-in studio that musical mastermind John Ridgard helped build in a disused office in Leamington Spa and where heir debut album was recorded. And the time covers the duration of singer and lyricist Beck Wood's last big relationship, laid out in her songs from first flutter to final choke.