LAW - Cowboys & Hustlers EP

Indeed, ‘soul’ - emotion, feeling, humanity, whatever you want to call it - is placed front and centre of all the music released by the Edinburgh-based artist. Her debut EP Haters and Gangsters, comprised of seven doses of dystopian R&B, was a record almost brimming over with LAW’s impassioned expression. From the clatter and swagger of “Haters” to the more poised and poignant “OG”, these tracks were remarkable for the sheer potency of emotion that they conveyed.

A few months on, Cowboys & Hustlers sees Holt continue in much the same vein. Sometimes weird and often unsettling, yet always underpinned by a pop-inflected catchiness, Cowboys & Hustlers sees LAW take some rather dated singer-songwriter/R&B tropes and recast them afresh, with new life humming between the notes. Take the lilting, jaunty flow of “Lilo” - these sounds could have been gleaned from a nursery school music box, but Holt’s idiosyncratic vocal style lends the track an air altogether more menacing and unfamiliar. It’s a trick she repeats with aplomb on “Peter” - there’s nothing too overtly radical about the gently swaggering percussion, but there’s something about Holt’s fraught, sometimes strained vocals that gives the music an edge of otherworldly nightmare.

One peculiarity is to find the single “Hustle” nestled at track four - it was this haunting number that gave LAW her breakthrough moment in early 2013, and to find it here seems a tad regressive. Nevertheless, it’s LAW’s most impressive track to date - sombre horn arrangements layered over a understated percussion lay the foundation for Holt’s mournful vocals. Indeed, it might be this track that proves that maxim of hers correct. Cowboys & Hustlers has got soul in spades - and it’s more than good.