His first new music in five years, Michael Head’s upcoming album with his Red Elastic Band ‘Dear Scott’ comes exclusively pressed to yellow and red marble LP, signed and hand-numbered on a first-come-first-served basis via Blood Records. Conjuring pure beauty in song, often in ugly times, has long been Michael Head’s gift to the world first with The Pale Fountains, then the legendary Shack and The Strands, Head stands close to pinnacle of his latest peak.

In a rare, collaborative move for the songwriter, for whom isolation as a writer usually reveals the clearest voice, the record snaked from the rehearsal room. It bears the hallmarks, as four-piece The Red Elastic Band wax and wane through Postcard jangle-pop and squalling-solo wig-outs, while Head, in vintage form, glances sing-a-long syllables off the swaggering beat backed by the production of Bill Ryder-Jones.

Dear Scott’s title refers back to a golden age of show-business, writing and movie-making, a million miles from a pandemic-shrouded Liverpool, that has captivated Head in recent years. It’s a place of escape. The Scott in question is F Scott Fitzgerald, who, down, out and bankrupt, was moved into the infamous Garden Of Allah Hotel in Hollywood by his agent. Under unclear circumstances, Fitzgerald wrote a postcard to himself upon checking in, giving Head’s new body of work at the very last minute. Head sited the album quite definitely between the palm trees and fast-flowing, pool-side cocktails of golden-era Beverly Hills having found his lyrical preoccupations pooled around the burnished glamour of the era.